How F1 teams are turning to AI to improve performance on the track

WOKING, England — Inside McLaren’s massive technology center, artificial intelligence isn’t something that’s shouted from the rooftops.

However, the 60-year-old motorsports giant is an avid user of the tech behind the scenes.

At the McLaren Technology Center (MTC), located in Woking, England, the company explained how it’s using AI to improve its chances on the Formula One track.

“We’re an organization that’s used traditional machine learning tech products for a long time,” Dan Keyworth, McLaren’s director of business technology, said in a press briefing at the MTC in October.

Using machine learning, McLaren is able to base its decision-making on probability, which in turn helps it train its AI models, according to Keyworth.

The racing firm showed off numerous examples of technological innovation at the MTC. They range from real-time data monitoring inside its secretive mission control room, to the use of “digital twins” (3D digital versions of physical objects) of real cars that allow teams to model the conditions that actual vehicles will need to perform in.

Keyworth said there are three main areas where McLaren is applying AI in a big way: improving car performance, day-to-day operations, and commercialization.

He added that generative AI tools are offering new capabilities for F1 teams, including the ability to run in-depth simulations of certain possibilities that might take place during races.

That could span from working out an ideal time a car should spend at pit stops, to deciding on which tires to add onto the vehicle when replacing an old set.

“What AI allows us to do from a generative perspective is to actually game out more of those actual scenarios and go, ‘What will happen?'” Keyworth said.

Some of those scenarios are starting to lead to “pretty accurate” results — to an “almost scary” degree, heh added.

Tech has long been key to success when it comes to motorsports — and not just for McLaren.

Various F1 teams have been exploiting modern advances in technology for years — from cloud computing to AI and machine learning.

Aston Martin Aramco, for example, touts the use of so-called “data lakes” — massive data storage centers — and machine learning tech to learn from vast volumes of data to predict patterns and improve decision-making.

Clare Lansley, Aston Martin Aramco’s chief information officer, says machine learning algorithms can blend data on tires, the weather and track conditions, and use predictive analytics to optimize decisions.

In an April blog post, she said the speed at which these developments are happening is “really impressive.”

“By adopting this tech, we are going to be able to free up multiple engineers so they can focus more acutely on car performance,” she noted.

Another F1 team deploying AI to improve its racetrack performance and strategy is Red Bull-owned Visa Cash App RB.

Peter Bayer, CEO of RB, said earlier this year that the Italian F1 team is making use of AI to compete down to “hundreds and thousandths of a second.”

Speaking at an event with the firm’s software partner Epicor at its factory in Faenza, Italy, Guillaume Dezoteux, RB’s head of vehicle performance, said that AI can help inform teams when it comes to planning as “it means you don’t need to run 100 simulations.”

Keyworth noted that none of the innovation that goes on inside McLaren would happen without the help of IT tools and equipment from partners like Cisco and Google.

“Connectivity is probably the lifeblood of the sport,” he said ahead of the Oct. 27 Mexico City Grand Prix race. “Without it, nothing starts. No car can be on the track safely.”

A key component behind McLaren’s ability to keep data flowing through to its teams in real-time is its so-called mobile data centers.

These are miniature server rooms that get flown around to different races around the world to keep the digital components of the operation online consistently.

“These mobile data centers are flown alongside the famous F1 cars to each race location and brought online remotely to enable real-time storage and data processing” from the MTC, Chintan Patel, Cisco’s chief technology officer for the U.K. and Ireland, told CNBC.

Another area where AI is adding benefits is commercialization, according to McLaren’s Keyworth.

For fans and partners, he said, McLaren is increasingly trying to “enrich the journey and experience, and make our fans feel more connected.”

With AI, McLaren can better target fans located in more nascent markets for F1 like the U.S., where the sport has grown in popularity — for example, by personalizing information to fans at certain times of day.

Meanwhile, when it comes to using AI on the business side of things, Keyworth said, the main area of improvement the company is seeing is in “making everybody’s lives richer, slicker, faster, more efficient.”

“It’s not a labor replacement — it’s a ‘laborious’ replacement,” he said. “You want to unlock your team to do the things that you hired them for — not to work through the overhead that lives in their role.”