Formula One Teams Push for a Data Edge
Lotus, Infiniti Red Bull Racing, Others Put Growing Emphasis on Data Analysis
NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, England— Marlon Stöckinger, 23 years old, a Filipino-Swiss Junior Formula One driver, started racing for British racing team Lotus in 2013. He finished that year's Renault RNO.FR -3.50% 3.5 Series season in 18th position on the official Junior F1 rankings, with 23 points.
This year, midway in the calendar, he has 63 points. Notwithstanding Mr. Stöckinger's improving skill, how did he do it?
Lotus says it came partly from new ways it collects data vital for improving the performance of its race cars.
2013, Lotus switched a technical partnership on data storage from California-based NetApp to much-bigger U.S. rival EMC Corp. EMC -0.82%
"We are able to punch way above our weight," says Michael Taylor, Lotus F1 Team's information technology director.
Technology in the F1 Wheel
Formula One drivers have a lot to think about during a race. Check out some of the many buttons, toggles, switches and controls fitted to a F1 car's steering wheel.
Faster access to data during a race allows for quicker car modeling and simulation tests. And the team is now able to analyze car aerodynamics in two hours, rather than two weeks as it had done previously.
"We are able to now pull 2,000 statistics per lap," says Mr. Taylor. "Tire data, weather data, fuel data and positional data [are] feeding into a system that is constantly churning out the optimum race strategy."
Car design and function are also key to performance. Engine problems have marred the results of its senior team this year, with Lotus currently in eighth position out of the 11 teams in this year's championship after finishing fourth last year.
But data advances are giving the car an extra edge, says Lotus.
Data is the "blueprint for a racing driver," says Mr. Stöckinger.
The move by Lotus is just one indication of the sport's rush to collect ever larger amounts of data amid rising technical demands in a sport where victory or defeat are measured in hundredths of a second.
The trend is a shift considering F1's technology challenge has typically focused on tweaking a racing car's 80,000 mechanical parts.
The new data rush is allowing smaller teams to narrow the competitive gap as it means less reliance on driver experience and intuition.
Big teams have taken notice.
Before every F1 race, Dallas-based telecom giant AT&T Inc. T -0.73% installs a custom-built fiber-optic network for Infiniti Red Bull Racing's 60-strong track-side team. At the U.S. Grand Prix's Circuit of The Americas in 2013, for example, it brought 120 miles of cabling.
Red Bull is using the fiber-optic data network to try to give its racing cars an advantage. During a race, 100 telemetry sensors in the car relay metrics like speed, pressure and air flow in seven to 10 milliseconds from the Silverstone circuit to data analysts at both its Milton-Keynes factory and wind tunnel in Bedford, both in southern England, as well as engine manufacturer, Renault SA, in Viry, eastern France, some 400 kilometers away.
Data from a car racing in Australia appears on screens at the U.K. factory in three hundred milliseconds, near instantaneously.
Around 200 gigabytes of data goes to the factory every race weekend—more than triple the amount three years ago, says Al Peasland, Red Bull's head of technical partnerships.
"[AT&T's] network is now 2½ times faster than in 2013, says Austria's Red Bull, FIA F1 Championship constructor and driver champions for the last four consecutive years. "It means we can send more data, more quickly," says Mr. Peasland.
It is a competitive space. AT&T's Indian telecom rival Tata Communications Ltd. 500483.BY +0.75% also plays across the F1 circuit.
F1 team Sahara Force India, headed by Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya, partners with Claro, a unit of Mexican telecom giant América Móvil SAB. AMX.MX -0.96% German software company SAP SE SAP.XE -2.19% works with McClaren Mercedes—this year's ace team.
Lotus is building private cloud data storage across two data centers at its campus in Enstone, an Oxfordshire village west of London, using EMC's server technology.
Data needs have nearly doubled in two years and show no signs of slowing, says Lotus. So EMC is providing 1 petabyte—or one quadrillion bytes—of storage to the team until the end of 2016.
EMC doesn't disclose the cost of the technology.
And Mr. Taylor declined to give specific examples of how data use gives his team an advantage, saying race strategy is confidential.
Annual rule changes are also accelerating investment in data technology to improve car design, executives say. This season's regulations require cars designed with less powerful engines, relying on aerodynamic efficiency from a single tailpipe and lower fuel consumption.
F1 drivers have to watch over 20 controls, including overtake and torque, as they race for two hours at speeds of up to 350 kilometers a hour in a cockpit whose temperature can reach 50 degrees Celsius.
Antonio Felix Da Costa, Red Bull's 22-year-old Portuguese reserve driver, says secure radio messages through his earpiece are kept "short" in pressurized race conditions. "[But] you could very easily break down [without data]."