A sports software, company founded by a former pupil of Tenby’s Greenhill School has been honoured to be recognised with the Queen’s Award for ‘Enterprise in Innovation’ for its RaceWatch software system.

RaceWatch development began in 2008 when founder of SGB Sports Software UK Ltd, Gareth Griffith, who attended Pentlepoir and Greenhill schools, attended the Monaco Grand Prix with Honda Racing F1.

Gareth who is the son of the late Colin Griffith, formerly headmaster at Penally School, and Dot Griffith, saw first-hand how overloaded the strategists were with different numeric displays, sometimes overlooking the actual race and missing crucial events.

Drawing on his experience developing television graphics systems, Gareth set to work to develop a comprehensive visual strategy system tightly integrated with video.

RaceWatch’s integrated video, data analysis, visualisation and race strategy system for teams and race organisers is now widely used in Formula One and other motorsport series around the world.

Alongside real —time decision making, RaceWatch is equally renowned for its post-event analysis tools. All data, and every display, can be viewed exactly as it was in any given point in the session.

This means that every decision can be analysed based on exact information available at the time.

RaceWatch systems have been used to manage races safely and efficiently since 2011 and in the last two years, SBG has established strong links with several other sports, including Premier League football, Six Nations Rugby and many international football and rugby leagues and federations around the world, and has also begun to develop similar applications outside sport.

The Queen’s Award for Enterprise is highly competitive and, most unusually, this is the third award which Gareth, who now lives in Surrey with his wife Kate and sons Samuel and Benjamin has earned for three different companies.

In 1995, he was given the Queen’s Award for ‘Export Achievement with TV and Film Special Effects’ with his software developing company Parallax Software Limited; and in 2005, he picked up the Queen’s Award for ‘Enterprise and Innovation for Television news maps’ with his Curious Software Company. Veterans of both companies are now members of the SBG team.

The company will be presented with the award by The Lord Lieutenant, the Queen’s representative, at their headquarters in London and will celebrate the accolade later in the summer during a Royal Reception for Queen’s Award winners.