Black Falcon Uses 3D Scanning to Verify a Nürburgring Crash Repair

Rebuilding a race car, then proving it is straight

Black Falcon's Porsche 911 GT3 Cup took enough damage during the Nürburgring 24 Hours to require a full rebuild, not a simple panel swap. Before the car returned to the Nordschleife, the team needed proof that the repaired structure matched its original geometry. They got that proof from a 3D scanner.

The team used SHINING 3D's FreeScan Trak Nova, a portable optical metrology system, to scan the rebuilt chassis and compare it against reference data. The scan covered the full vehicle structure, then zoomed into the repaired areas to confirm tolerances before the car was cleared to race again.

Why scanning replaced tape measures

Endurance race cars undergo enough stress over 24 hours that even small structural deviations can change handling or compromise safety. Visual inspection and conventional measuring tools catch some problems, but they do not produce a dataset you can compare against the original CAD model. That is what the FreeScan Trak Nova provided.

The system pairs a handheld scanner with a separate tracking unit. Both units have built-in computing and swappable batteries, so the whole setup runs wirelessly in the workshop. It is rated to 0.02 mm accuracy over a 12 cubic meter working volume, verified against VDI/VDE 2634 Part 3 and ISO 10360 standards. A patented video photogrammetry mode means it does not need coded targets on the car body. Instead, it uses a calibration rod and real-time video to maintain accuracy across a scan area up to 2,600 by 2,200 mm.

The tracker weighs 1.2 kg, the scanner 1.6 kg, and both pack into a single case. That matters for a team that moves equipment between workshop and pit during a race weekend.

The bigger picture for motorsport

Black Falcon has raced at the Nürburgring for more than 20 years and has two overall wins at the 24-hour event. Its technical partnership with SHINING 3D now covers chassis and crash-structure analysis, aerodynamic surface capture, and routine documentation of surfaces worn down by long-distance racing. The post-crash verification workflow is the most visible use case, but it is only one part of a broader shift.

Motorsport teams are moving away from treating 3D scanning as a specialist tool and toward treating it as a routine engineering step. Black Falcon's workflow reflects that. The FreeScan Trak Nova won the iF Design Award in 2026 for product design, a recognition that fits a tool built to live in a race pit rather than a clean lab.