Many sports organizations across the world have found themselves unable to host live competitions in 2020 with spectators in the stands due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The FIA Formula One World Championship, however, has managed to kick off its season after a lengthy delay with a revised 17-race calendar.
Aston Martin Red Bull Racing, along with the other nine Formula One teams, hit the ground running with back-to-back races in Austria in early July. In between these two races, Citrix had a virtual catch up with Paul Monaghan, Chief Engineer of Car Engineering, to better understand his role within the race team and how he kept pushing its engineering development forward in this remote environment, and what technology has allowed him to function just as he normally would if the race season had started as it should have back in March 2020.
It was an extremely busy time for Paul as his engineering team had to take learnings from the first race of the delayed season in July and identify ways to develop the car for a second race on the exact same circuit in just six days’ time — a first in Formula One.
“It’s like a controlled test experience for us,” Monaghan says. “Typically, we would have raced here in Austria and then take our learnings to another circuit that is different. In this instance, we have two races where the lines and the speeds will be roughly the same, and it really does remove one of the inevitable variables. which is circuit layout, therefore speed, gradients, cornering type, etc. — all the things that we tend to normalize when you’re making an analysis. All the outside parameters that are rarely or never typically in our control, now we have control of some of them. To make progress on the car, it’s up to us to realize the opportunity and draw benefit from it.”
That opportunity was realized over the next four races with the team’s first podium of the year secured by Max Verstappen in Austria, followed by back-to-back podium finishes at Silverstone, UK, as well as the Spanish Grand Prix. These successes come from a culmination of hard work from many highly skilled people on the race team, and the support of their technology partners. Citrix technology even helped the race team make a case against the FIA during a race weekend in Austria.
“I was due an audience with the FIA — F1’s governing body — to discuss the current cars and a topic for next year,” he says. “I was able to open some fairly big pieces of information on the 2019 and 2020 cars in that room and offer our insight.
“The CAD (computer aided-designs) were viewable remotely onsite, and the FIA was even able to see it as a screenshare. I had the CAD open, we looked at some fairly big parts of the race car in assemblies and we were able to turn it around on the screen, open parts, and cut sections. Without a Citrix link, there is absolutely no way I would ever have been able to do that. I’m simply a Citrix user, and I’m just reliant on the software. We got what we sought from the FIA and it was seamless. It was brilliant.”
Instances of remote working are regular occurrences for Aston Martin Red Bull Racing as their trackside team need to access files at a moment’s notice for analysis, something that is crucial to being able to make informative decisions which ultimately affect the cars performance on track.
“When at the track, we are a remote station from the mothership in the UK and even a more remote station from Honda in Japan,” Paul says. “All of our design information resides on machines in the UK, and we need access to these files. I use Citrix technology to open, interrogate, and manipulate files remotely, and it’s pretty much as quick as working from the factory. If things aren’t going as well as expected between sessions and we need to open CAD files and work on them immediately, it is a seamless experience.
“Within the running periods of the car, I know that using Citrix I can open CAD parts and review things just like that. It enhances knowledge when you need it most and when you need it most quickly. So, for me, that’s where we draw the greatest benefit and it’s of enormous value if you think of the magnitude of the CAD technology we have, the detailed level of the car parts, and how we can interrogate to build assemblies. What we’re able to do is quite stunning.”
Formula One initiated a mandatory shutdown for all teams from March 28 to June 1. Like many businesses affected by the pandemic, Aston Martin Red Bull Racing kept a majority of its workforce at home, working remotely while a skeleton team slowly came back to the factory as allowed once the mandatory shutdown period passed,. Paul was a part of that team.
“There are bound to be challenges,” he says. “We lost the ability for face-to-face communications, rather obviously. If we’re not all in the same office, then traditional methods of popping over to see a few people and have a quick chat, the location is irrelevant. We can pass on word of mouth and exchange information quite quickly and our business keeps turning in the manner we became used to before the pandemic. Once we are geographically separated, you become reliant upon software to do more and more of your leg work between people. If we are going to work efficiently, our communications should be undented by the geographical situation.
“Thankfully, with technology such as Citrix, your access to data becomes independent of your geography. As some of us come back to the factory, some stay at home, and we’re more widely spread out across our facilities then there’s a chance we’re not going to function as a business but we do, because we have partners such as Citrix giving us the help that we need within Aston Martin Red Bull Racing to carry on functioning and challenging in our sport.”
Being fragmented geographically makes all businesses more dependent on software systems.
Paul and his engineering team at Aston Martin Red Bull Racing can work remotely, operate remotely, and the impact of business efficiency is minimal.
“We were able to take steps to observe the governmental guidelines and the prevention of its spread, yet the Team was able to move forward and function continually as we would like to,” Paul says. “We are a prototype business. Our prototype, the car, is in constant evolution and that requires us to embrace change.
“If we are going to embrace change, we had better know what each of us is doing. So, we’re able to keep our communications open, we’re able to review CAD files — in the same capacity whether at the track, in the factory, or at home with a remote working arrangement. The legacy of all that technology is that the car we currently run on track is not the same car that we built and took to Australia in March of this year.”
With that positive attitude, ambition, and resiliency leading Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s car engineering team, coupled with some more outstanding on track performances by the drivers (and despite the upheaval of the first half of 2020), we still have one of the most exciting F1 race seasons ahead of us.
Watch a discussion with Aston Martin Red Bull Racing and the San Francisco 49ers to hear how two of the world’s most recognizable sports teams are maintaining business continuity in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
