How Corsa got started
Corsa Instruments, Inc. was created in 1991 by Erik Kauppi and Sinisa Mandich, racers who are also engineers. They had looked around for a good affordable data system for their own race team and couldn't find one. So they made their own. And after far more work than it usually takes to build a whole race car, they had a working data logger that was good enough to sell to other teams.

Corsa has been in the business of racing data acquisition systems since 1991. Over the years we have added many new features and sensors to our data acquisition system, doing whatever was necessary to meet our customer’s needs. Every time we go to the track, whether with a customer team or some of our friends, we learn something new.

Milestones:

1991 - Working with a Late Model stock car team at a local track. When we got out the laptop and started downloading data from the car, we sure got a lot of stares! Back then our first prototype, and an 8086 laptop running DOS, was high tech indeed. 1993 - First Corsa system sold to a customer. Thanks, Al! 1995 - Corsa has their first exhibit at the Performance Racing Industry show in Columbus, Ohio. We’ve been a regular at PRI ever since. 1996 - First Corsa system sold to a tractor puller. Though our system was developed for a different type of racing, we made it flexible enough to handle applications we hadn’t considered. This basic design decision paid off very well and Corsa is now the leader in data acquisition systems for diesel tractor pullers. 1997 - Partnership formed with William C. Mitchell Software. Combining Corsa electronics with Bill’s software and experience brought a new level of sophistication at a very reasonable price to SCCA road racers. 1999 - The newly formed Grand American Road Racing (Grand-Am) asks Corsa to design a datalogger which all cars in certain classes will be required to use. The datalogger records turbo boost pressure and other variables to make sure the teams are within the rules. Corsa becomes the official supplier of compliance data recorders to Grand Am. Certain Grand Am cars are required to use Corsa dataloggers starting with the 2000 Rolex 24 hour race at Daytona. 2002 - Corsa starts producing data recorders and telemetry for GDJ, Inc. educational products. Model roller coasters and crash cars with telemetry, what fun! Even a chassis dynamometer for radio-control cars. See www.gdjinc.com 2003 - The EZ-Logger, Corsa's wireless Data Logger, is introduced. A lightweight logger sampling up to 50 samples a second, the EZ-Logger proves itself to be a superior to it's predecessor in every way. 2006 - Improving on an already great design, the Corsa EZ II Data Logger is released, replacing the EZ-Logger. In addition to the robust versatility of the original Corsa Data Logger, the wireless radio is upgraded to communicate over distances up to half a mile.

The wireless data logger
In late 2002, we started a project to design a revolutionary new product, the then named Corsa EZ-Logger. The basic idea was to make it much easier for ordinary racing teams to use data acquisition. We looked at everything we had seen teams struggle with in the last ten years, every support call we ever received, and addressed those issues. We worked hard to simplify all aspects of the system. The EZ-Logger, released in 2003, is the result of this effort. It's a completely new design, sharing almost no parts with our previous CS1 system, but sharing all the experience gained over ten years and hundreds of installations. Not stopping there, we retired the EZ-Logger in 2006, coming out with the Corsa EZ-II Wireless Data Logger that is capable of downloading data from half a mile away.

Learn more about the Corsa Data Logger here!