Every race weekend, Red Bull Racing Honda strives to be the best team on the track. The team’s drivers, Max Verstappen and Checo Perez, give it their all, with a focus on raising the Constructors’ and Drivers’ Championship trophies at the end of the F1 season.
To the average F1 fan, it might seem like the drivers are racing alone in their cars, but that’s far from the truth. In these technologically advanced times, communication between the drivers and their team is key, and data plays a vital role in a sport that is more popular than ever.
“Citrix allows us to see all the data instantly across the team whether we’re on the track or in the ops room and that’s how we strategize, pivot, and ultimately, how we win,” Verstappen says.
For each race, the F1 teams can bring a very limited number of employees to the track. This includes senior team management, pit crew and mechanics, race engineers, strategists, aerodynamicists, and marketing. It’s actually a small number, considering a portion of these employees are split between the two drivers, with each driver having their own dedicated team.
With a limited number of staff allowed at the track, the link back to the factory is critical. During a race weekend, a group of dedicated Red Bull Racing Honda employees are stationed at the Technology Campus in Milton Keynes to support the team at the track. They work from the operations room (Ops Room), a restricted access room in the middle of the Red Bull Racing Honda factory.
“It gives you a lot of confidence to know there’s such a big group of people back home at the factory supporting you through every second of the race, who all try and give you the perfect race,” Verstappen says. “Everyone in the room is trying to unlock the potential of the car”.
The Ops Room is beyond impressive, with a floor-to-ceiling 4K screen, the largest in Europe at the time of installation. The rows of cinema seating seats add to the feel of being in a mission control setting. For a moment, you’d think you’re at NASA and a rocket is about to launch into space.
The Ops Room is only accessible to those who have an active role to play during the F1 race weekend. Each row of the Ops Room is dedicated to a particular specialist team, with performance engineers, design, aerodynamicists, and race strategists making up most of personnel in the room. Each team member in the room has their own, individual workspace, consisting of two screens displaying the most essential data to their role, and a communications panel and headset to talk to other members of their particular team. All team members working from the Ops Room are connected via a privately installed AT&T Global network in real time with their counterparts at the track, whether they are working in Austin, Australia, or Abu Dhabi. The AT&T network enables secure communication between the track and the Ops Room and ensures the speed and stability the team needs.
During a track session, the 4K TV can display up to 24 different feeds, including onboard footage from the team’s two cars and from their competitors, as well as track positioning and the general feed from the Sky Sports network.
Citrix technology is present at each track as well as at the factory in Milton Keynes. This enables the team to process, examine and compare both “fresh” data that comes in from the track and “historic” data that is stored at the factory. The combined data sets help the team analyze the progress, health, and optimization of the cars during the practice sessions, allowing for real-time decisions.
“During the session, we’re watching the data live but we’re also able to run some background analysis,” explains Jeff Calam, Senior Projects Engineer for the team. “Having the Citrix machines means that you basically have more than one computer, so you can use tools on one computer whilst you’re watching the telemetry on the other. This increases our capacity. Having a computer that’s based at the factory, from where we can access all of the data we have here, e.g. the information that comes from our rigs and all the vast information we have from the previous races; and having the Citrix machines at the track running real-time and providing us with new data, makes our work much more efficient”.
The busiest day in The Ops Room is on Fridays of race weekends, during the free practice sessions. This is when new parts of the car are tested and when racing at the track will be analyzed by comparing the countless number of data simulations that the team has created in preparation for the weekend.
“Data is fundamental to everything we do,” says Alistair Brizell, Principal Aerodynamicist. “There are hundreds of sensors on the car, which all generate large quantities of data. To extract performance out of the car we must analyze this data and come to engineering conclusions off the back of it. In Formula 1, the key is doing that as quickly as possible. The most optimal way to achieve this is to use Citrix virtual machines trackside and Citrix connections to deliver that. This means, as soon as the data comes off the car and is received trackside, we can start looking at it. By being as close as possible to the data we can make crucial decisions in the shortest possible time.”
The main job of the employees in the Ops Room is to be the eyes and ears for the Red Bull Racing Honda team at the track, combing through huge amounts of data and footage to quality-check the car’s progress during the F1 free practice sessions, F1 qualifying, orthe F1 race.
Christian Horner, Team Principal, explains: “This room plays a crucial role during the course of a Grand Prix weekend. It is an extended part of the engineering office trackside. We’re a data-driven business so the decisions we make whether on strategy, our ability, or performance are all driven through performance-driven data”.
Ben Waterhouse, Head of Performance Engineering, says: “Data is the primary source for any engineer in Formula 1. And we aim to extract more performance from a given amount of data in the shortest time possible. Citrix enables us to get that data faster, to be able to process it faster, and lead to lap time improvements which ultimately lead to better results on track and better performance for the team”.
After qualifying on Saturday, when the cars are in Parc Fermé, the team is not allowed to make any further modifications to the cars. This means that on the Sunday, during the race, it’s mainly the strategy team and only a small number of the design and aerodynamics teams who work from the Ops Room to ensure the team accumulates to most points possible in their quest for the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships.
Learn more about how Red Bull Racing Honda fuels its need for speed with digital technology from Citrix.
