Izwan Ismail spends a day with the Renault Sport F1 team in Singapore to find out just how technology powers the breakneck world of Formula 1 and Microsoft
BEHIND the super fast cars and celebrity-status drivers, the glamorous world of the Formula One race is undoubtedly one of the most technologically advanced sports in the world. While fans enjoy watching their favourite teams’ cars speeding around the track at breakneck speed in excess of 300km/h, what they don’t see is the marvellous technology that powers them.
In fact, what often gets overlooked by the spectators are the innovations that go into the make-up of the car, from its design to the race day. It’s all tech-driven.
TECH DRIVEN
One of the teams that is using technology in a big way is the Renault Sport Formula One Team. The stickers of tech companies on these carsdenote they are more than sponsors, they are in fact partners who help ensure the teams’ top performance.
For Renault, Microsoft has been one of its biggest technology providers for the past five years. Renault Sport Racing managing director Cyril Abiteboul explains how technology is vital in a sport like the F1. The Renault Sport Formula One Team (formerly Lotus F1), which made its return to the sport this year after the Lotus F1 Team acquisition, is banking fully on technology to win the race. Almost all aspects of the race are touched by technology and it’s just impossible to move ahead without it.
“It’s not just about the race, but the whole ecosystem of the sports, from conceptualising, designing, building, managing parts and inventory, simulation, gathering of data, analysis and more ... all involve heavy use of technology,” said Abiteboul at the recent Singapore F1 race.
DIFFERENT BALLGAME
Having been in the F1 sports for 15 years, the Frenchman knows the ins and outs of the game. “Unlike other sports like soccer and tennis, the rules and regulations in F1 keep changing every year. This means new cars with new designs.
“New engines need to be produced every year in a relatively short window of time, probably around five months,” he says, adding that normal car manufacturers normally take five to six years to do this.
“Imagine the pressures we are facing. This is where technology like Microsoft comes in,” Abiteboul said.
Formula One is heading for one of the biggest overhaul of its rules next year, when new technical regulations warrant cars to be wider and to run on wider tyres. Simulations have shown that lap times will reduce by four to five seconds per lap. This means that teams need to substantially re-think their designs to meet the new requirements, which is even more challenging as there is little evolution from previous parts.
“In a race like this, where every team has the same car specifications and engine capacity, it’s the use of technology, analysis and the drivers that make the difference,” says Abiteboul.
FACING CHALLENGES
To face these challenges, Renault uses Microsoft’s various technologies such as cloud-based enterprise resource planning software Microsoft Dynamics AX, Azure Machine Learning suite, Office 365 and hardware like Surface and Lumia phones.
Since partnering with Microsoft, the team has been able to vastly reduce the amount of time it takes to bring parts from conceptual idea to car - whether it is designing, wind tunnelling or 3D modelling, according to Abiteboul. The team has also been able to leverage technology to break down silos between teams to maintain its fast-moving and agile culture.
At the garage and the headquarters, race engineers need to have all the pertinent race data at their fingertips, rather than just rely on gut feeling and instinct to make engineering decisions.
“The software helps us gather real-time race data,” explained Abiteboul.
He added that race cars like Renault have about 200 main sensors and many more smaller ones that constantly collect and relay data as the cars travel down the track. “In each kilometre, gigabytes of data are collected and analysed to make the car’s performance better. The real-time data helps the team to make modifications during actual races,” he said.
The Renault Sport Formula One Team uses the cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics AX to store and analyse all the collected data without having to ship its servers around the globe for the 21 races it competes in each year.
This also means the team can remotely send data and insights back to the facility where it designs, manufactures and develops its parts according to an innovation schedule that cannot afford any bottlenecks.
By pairing Dynamics AX with Microsoft Power BI, the Renault Sport Formula One Team can call up data in real time, with rich interactive visuals on customised dashboards, allowing the team to make exact modifications at the breakneck speeds the races require.
The Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, meanwhile, is used to track all kinds of data, including the ambient temperature, track temperature, and information about the car’s tyres. Once the team has all this data, it can integrate it into a simulator that can model how the car will perform in different situations.
COMPETE LIKE NO OTHER
Microsoft’s director of product management, Dynamics 365, Pepijn Richter explained that by relying on technology and collaborative tools, racing teams are better equipped to further interpret the real-time data, to make the necessary strategic decisions and deliver a podium finish. For example, at the garage, a Renault crew showed how the Microsoft Dynamics AX is used to manage the team’s car parts, from suspension to bolts.
Everything comes in five sets (two used in the cars and three spares), and when one is worn out or broken, all the crew in charged have to do is replace it by scanning the code on the product and the information is automatically transferred to the Renault factory in the UK for new product replacement as soon as possible.
Added to the complexity is how each car component has a limited lifespan due to both fatigue and an innovation cycle that produces better components on a race by race basis, in an agile and responsive manner. This is exceptionally crucial in a sport where every second counts.
“For the Renault Sport Formula One Team, being able to make changes at an incredible speed is a clear goal, where parts production often must deliver within 24 hours,” said Richter. “When we look at how companies are urgently transforming in a digital world in order to gain competitive advantages, Renault Sport Formula One Team carry this notion to the extreme.