Formula 1 racing is a highly competitive sport, with competing teams spending hundreds of millions in attempts to gain even the slightest edge on the track.
The sport is also a rigorous testing bed for next gen and bleeding edge technology, with thousands of opportunities for conducting real world tests under extreme conditions.
It is no accident that the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team have partnered with remote connectivity provider TeamViewer in search of a technical competitive advantage.
“The biggest advantage that using TeamViewer has brought to Mercedes on the race track has been improving the lines of communication between the drivers and the engineers trackside, as well as the Race Support Room (RSR) at the Mercedes factory in Brackley,” Steven Riley, Head of IT at Mercedes, told Connected to India. “Communication between the engineers and the driver is crucial and the ability to provide the driver with instantaneous access to data, videos and telemetry via the drop-down screens in the garage, informs critical decisions about strategy and pit stops.”
Starting from around a decade ago, Formula 1 racing fans would have noticed drop down screens being placed in front of the drivers while the car was in the garage. These screens are a new device that allow the drivers to review data from previous laps, check on the state of the car and many other data points at the touch of a button.
The Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula 1 Team has already been successfully using TeamViewer Tensor as the ultimate remote connectivity platform across its racing operations. In July 2022 the engineering team turned to TeamViewer as its software solution for the dropdown screen data feed.
The Tensor platform enables enterprise grade remote connectivity for always-on scenarios. It boasts the best-in-class security, scalability and manageability making it the performance driving solution that the team needed during practice and qualifying runs in the garage.
Using the platform, the team's engineers trackside and in the Race Support Room (RSR) at the factory can provide the drivers with fast and one-hundred-percent reliable access to all the live data they have on the runs while the driver stays in the car.
This includes intelligence relating to weather, run plans, strategy, and competitor analysis, as well as live feed TV of the session, playbacks of their run and footage of the competitors on the track – without stepping out of the car and wasting essential seconds.
In a highly technical and data-driven sport like F1 racing, the new communications technology multiplies the work efficiency and dynamics of the engineering team and the quality of support they can provide their driver.
“Some of the top priorities for us in terms of remote connectivity have been to keep the data secure and to package it efficiently and in a way it can be easily communicated. TeamViewer’s solutions provide these and many other benefits to us,” Riley said. “TeamViewer is faster, more reliable and has more features than anything on the market. So for us, where milliseconds mean the difference in results, and communication between the driver and race engineers is critical, that’s how we deliver performance.”
TeamViewer is one of the leading tech firms that are providing secure and speedy lines of communication and remote connection for millions worldwide. They were partners with the Mercedes team for years before their sponsor logo was blazoned on the car.
"Given the pace of race weekends, any technology implementations must be able to keep up. Our enterprise remote connectivity platform, Tensor, meets these performance demands and has security built in meaning proprietary data stays with the team. For the Mercedes AMG PETRONAS F1 team it is all about reliability, speed and security and that is what Tensor delivers," said Peter Turner, Chief Commercial Officer, TeamViewer.
For TeamViewer, apart from the obvious value addition to the brand and prestige gains from providing for such complex and fast-paced needs, the ancillary advantages developed as a result of pushing the envelope are also quite substantial.
According to Turner, the innovations and codes they have developed to increase security, reliability and speed of data transfer for Mercedes are adapted and integrated into the services they provide to other clients, and have helped TeamViewer expand their operations and services.
“The firm has an office in Mumbai and is looking to expand into the Indian market, which is a giant well yet to be tapped,” Turner told Connected to India.
TeamViewer and the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula 1 Team will continue to push boundaries and data to gain a competitive edge and drive success on the track, an official statement concluded.