Life in the fast lane

Nothing is left to chance on a Formula One car, and PC manufacturer Lenovo is devoting millions to its sponsorship of the Williams team, writes John Collins

Fifty years ago this month, legendary Formula One racing driver Sir Stirling Moss became the first British driver to win the British Grand Prix in a British car.

He did so in highly-unusual circumstances.

Following a technical problem with his own car, he switched to his team-mate's car and, despite being six laps behind the leaders, finished the race victorious.

Even if the rules still allowed it, one couldn't imagine the current poster boy of UK motor sport, Lewis Hamilton, repeating the feat in a modern F1 car. Perhaps more than any other sport in the 21st century, Formula One has become intertwined with the application of expensive technology.

Invariably the teams with the biggest budgets and the most computing power are those that emerge victorious. Each car is finely tuned to the requirements of each driver and, while each team has one spare car at each Grand Prix, setting it up and getting it started is as much an IT project as a mechanical one.

At practice for the 2007 British Grand Prix in Silverstone last week, the assault on the senses and sheer adrenaline rush that 22 Formula One cars generate in full flight belied the cool-headed analysis and data-crunching that goes into getting the teams there.

Absolutely nothing is left to chance, and every piece of data from testing, qualifying and racing is captured and analysed to give the teams an edge over their competitors.

After all, this is a sport where the difference between success and failure is measured in hundredths of seconds.

Given that the sport has become in many ways a technology arms race, it is little surprise that the leading teams enjoy the support of some of the world's leading technology and communications companies.

Ferrari races with the Vodafone and SAP logos on its cars, the Toyota team has data storage specialists EMC as a sponsor, while BMW-Sauber has the backing of Intel and Dell.

The Williams team, which this year was rebranded as AT&T Williams, has the backing of the US telecoms giant as well as management consultants Accenture and Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo.

Lenovo, the world's third-largest PC manufacturer following the acquisition of IBM's PC division in 2005, is devoting millions of euro to its high-profile sponsorship of the Williams team.

As one of the few remaining wholly independent Formula One teams, Williams relies almost exclusively on sponsorship revenue to fund the team. Lenovo pays handsomely for its logo to appear on the sidepod of the Williams FW29 car, but it also provides the notebook computers which are exclusively used by staff at pit garages around the world and at the team's headquarters.

Ed Wood, the team's chief designer, describes his job as being primarily about technology management. He co-ordinates a team of 100 engineers who oversee all aspects of the car from its aerodynamics to the electronic systems onboard.

Asked whether he actually gets to design much of the cars any more, Wood admits that he "puts down the base building blocks of the car and draws some lines" but not as much as he would like to.

It's estimated that, between them, the 11 Formula One teams will spend $2.5 billion this year.

Although Williams doesn't reveal its annual budget, Sam Michael, the team's technical director, reveals that it spends about $4 million (€2.9 million) a year on information technology.

Lenovo supports 400 workstations - approximately 130 notebooks and about 270 desktops - for the 500 Williams staff. Some of those laptops are ruggedised for the heat and vibration that they have to endure in the Formula One environment. Michael says members of his team are working with Lenovo to explore the possibility of bringing commercial versions of these notebooks to market.

The team typically has five or six cars in production each season, which will be in varying stages of service, update and amendment. Each of those cars generates about one terabyte (1,024 gigabytes) of data each season, which means Lenovo computers are required to process up to seven terabytes of information.

The cars that the Williams team puts on the track at each Grand Prix have about 120 sensors - each of which has two back-ups in case of failure - which monitor vehicle and driver performance. This telemetry data - about one gigabyte of data per hour - is transmitted using AT&T technology to the engineering team at the track, and is downloaded to Lenovo computers at the end of the race.

The information is also networked to the engineering team at the Williams headquarters and factory back in Grove, UK.

One of the crucial roles that Lenovo technology plays is getting the current Williams FW29 cars to start. Sensors on each car track engine and gearbox parameters such as pressure and the temperature of oil, water and air.

Before the car is started, the engine is turned over without an electrical spark. Data from this test turn-over is downloaded to a Lenovo notebook PC, and if the engineer determines that all parameters are within limits, a spark is applied and the engine started. It's an essential step: if the engine is started without appropriate oil pressure, for example, the engine is ruined as the bearings will not survive.

The recent revelations about alleged spying in the Formula One paddock mean that the teams are even more paranoid about releasing specifics of their technology set-up.

Michael says all of the information that Williams holds at its factory in rural Oxfordshire is protected by encrypting the information and ensuring that strong passwords are required to access it. Even so, certain key information can only be accessed from within the factory.

"If I could see the information from Hamilton's car this weekend, it would be pretty limited as to what the team could do with that," says Michael.

"The real intellectual property is the aerodynamic surfaces and the geometry that goes into the body work."