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Information Management in Formula One

David France, IT Director, Brawn GP

Who we are

• Member of the exclusive formula one “club”

• A global shop window

• Highly competitive environment

• Performance improvements are measured in terms of 1,000ths of a second

• Technology reliant• Pushing technology for

competitive advantage (materials, ICT, etc.)

• But not “bleeding” edge

• Secretive and security conscious

A brief history of the team

• British American Racing:• Founded in 1997 by

British American Tobacco, Craig Pollock and Adrian Reynard

• Acquired the old Tyrell Racing team

• Honda:• Became joint shareholder with

BAT in December 2004• Sole owner in December 2005• Announced departure from F1

December 2008

• Became Brawn GP in March 2009

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Currentposition

The Brawn GP Team

• Operate from • Brackley based factory• Race tracks around the world

• A light engineering business• With the race team acting as a

“mobile” front office

• We have• Mercedes Benz

High Performance Engines• 450 staff

• Everyone is passionate about motor racing!

To be successful in Formula One

• You must be able to design, build, test and race a car…that has the right balance between speed, reliability and safety

and

• be able to develop and improve the performance of the car during the race season…at a faster pace than the competition

We have to keep developing the car

DecJan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep OctActivity

2009 Car Build

2009 Season

2009 Car Development

2010 New CarConcepts, Design & Build

2010 Season

2010 Car Development

Nov DecJan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov

Date 2009 2010

Racing

RacingWinter Tests

At Brackley we have

• High tech. purpose-built facility• Sophisticated engineering

manufacturing plant• Wind tunnel• Dyno• CFD Super Computer

• Mixture of business application systems• Common

e.g. CAD, CAM, ERP, etc• Specialist

e.g. Aero, CFD, FEA, etc

We capture a lot of data …

CFD Aero Design Manufacture Model Wind Tunnel Test Evaluate

Design Manufacture Dyno Test R&D Lab Test Track Test Evaluate/Approve

Prepare Race Assess Performance

CFD simulation dataWind Tunnel run dataCAD part files

FEA / Stress Analysis resultsEngine & Gearbox Dyno test resultsR&D Lab testsCAD part files

Vehicle Dynamics simulationsRace telemetry dataVideo analysis data

E

nd to end process flow

Information Produced

Challenges we face

• Large file sizes• Fast access times• Synchronisation

(between race circuit & factory)

• High availability & failover

• Volatility & growth

How we deal with those challenges

• WAN capacity• 10GB at the factory• 6MB/s between factory &

circuit

• Data synchronisation• Copy of race critical data

held at circuit• “Real time” synch of car

telemetry data to factory• Video analysis to circuit

between sessions

• SAN architecture• Virtualisation• Data mirroring

We had fragmented islands of storage

4TB

Car, Groups,

Aero & Other

1.2TB Home Shares & Archive

High Performance Fibre Channel Disk

Slower Performance (older) Disk

Medium Performance Parallel SCSI Disk

1.95TB CAD Data

68GB Mail Archive

130GB R&D Database

135GB SQL D/B Server 1

135GB SQL D/B Server 2

135GB PDM Database

7TB Analysis Data

Now we have large pools of storage

5.5TB

Email,Databases,

CADdata

140TB

Aero, Car, Analysis, Video, Home Shares,

Archive, Mirrors data

SATA 2 DiskParallel SCSI Disk

SAN Symphony

SATA 2 Disk

10TB

Race Team data

The Competitive Environment

• Each circuit is different• Race cars are built for

circuit characteristics• Limited practice time

before Saturday qualifying

• The race team needs to respond quickly to:• Car dynamics (e.g.

under/over steering, etc)• Tyre wear• Weather conditions• Competitor strategy &

performance

Preparing for the race – Pre-event

• Check data from previous year at this circuit

• Use this data to predict car performance• Run simulations

• Run tests

• Analyse results

• Specify car build• Configuration to suit the

circuit

• Specific components

Preparing for the race – During practice

• Factory based team work closely with race team at circuit

• Capture data • 60GB data for a race

weekend

• Analyse data • Identify car set-up

changes• Assess our performance

against competitors • Decide race strategy

During the race

• We monitor• The start

• Timing data

• TV coverage

• Performance of the car

• Health of the car

• Actions of others

• The weather

• We react as the race unfolds• Change strategy

• Telling drivers when “to push”

Example – Barcelona GP 2009

• Strategy for both cars• Qualifying – grid

positions• Start – first corner• Assessed race outcome

• Problem for JB

• Re-assessed strategy for each car• Changed strategy for JB

• Race outcome• JB 1st , RB 2nd

• “Your closest rival is your team mate”

The importance of information

“The difference between making a good or bad decision can be as much as several positions by the end of the race and therefore having the most accurate data possible at all times is key to having a successful strategy.”

James VowlesRace Strategy Engineer

“Effective information management is a pre-requisite to success in Formula One”

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