This year’s racing season is revving its engines in preparation for the Formula 1 Rolex Grand Prix in Melbourne this week, making it an exciting time for racing and car fans around the globe. While it may be the drivers and the cars that make Formula 1 racing exciting and draw in the crowds, without a great deal of hard work behind the scenes and a well-oiled team, they would never make it off the start line. Alan Peasland, Head of Technical Partnerships at Infiniti Red Bull Racing (IRBR) and Bernard Yee, Regional VP—Asia Pacific at AT&T shared their views on how the partnership between their respective companies enables a successful Formula 1 team to function.
Peasland describes a ‘traditional partnership’, he said “We work together, we develop together and we try to innovate together.” Yee emphasises the parallels between the demands of more conventional business clients and the Red Bull racing team, he stated “How to improve the car’s performance through analysis of data is a real-time exercise in F1, and no other arena better reflects the continual improvement and flexibility required from a lot of our business customers day in, day out.”
When it comes to the actual racing, vast amounts of data are managed both on race-weekend and throughout the season. Peasland said, “The challenge for every F1 team is to try to get to the optimum car earlier in the season than the competition. It really is a development race. Engineers of all different disciplines are at the race track. There are AT&T trackside telemetry data engineers that go to every race, they link with the operations rooms in France and the UK in real time. Over a race weekend we can have 200GB of data—firing up an engine creates 7GB of data. The operations room is where we can accommodate the data and support the race.” This real-time communication network between the two operation centres in France and the UK, and the 60-strong team at the track allows some of the team, typically 20–30 engineers, to be away from the energy and emotion of the track in order to focus better on their particular responsibility in a calmer environment.
Pia Jenson, who handles AT&T’s partnership with IRBR, puts this task into perspective, “What we’re doing here is basically setting up a mobile office for the team every two weeks in a different location around the world. Obviously we often set up offices for companies around the world, but generally not just for a race weekend.”
Peasland sees the ease of communication between the IRBR people across the globe as important to the success of the team. He remarked, “Getting forecast simulations and expert advice from track to factory, that’s where AT&T really step in for us. Whilst we’re at a race weekend, our experts in the factory can offer advice within seconds. Real-time, and support the engineers at the race track in making decisions.”
One goal
On the ethos of the IRBR team, Peasland asserted, “We have a very simple mission statement, which is to win races. Ultimately the 600 people who work within the IRBR team go to work every morning with that same mission in mind. It’s ‘How can I do something today that will help the team win a grand prix?’ This is all about doing things differently, being creative and actually loving life—enjoying what we do. For every one of the 600 in the team, Formula 1 is a way of life.” According to him, this mentality goes for all of those working at IRBR, including the 60-strong team at the track and the drivers.
Young talent
IRBR’s strategy for developing their staff has proved fruitful. The two drivers this year, Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat—and also Sebastian Vettel, the four-time World Champion with IRBR who left the team last year—have all benefited from the Red Bull Young Driver Programme, which uses another competing Formula 1 team—Torro Rosso—as a training ground for Red Bull’s up-and-coming talent. Peasland explained, “A lot of other teams have young driver programmes but they get very little chance to compete in F1. That’s something we’re very proud of—that we can take this young talent and actually bring them on to a world-class stage.” When asked how it’s possible to retain such high quality talent, he explained that it takes something special, “It’s very much a culture, an atmosphere, we are a family within the team. There is a unique Red Bull vibe, a Red Bull way of life—think differently, be creative. That filters into the Formula One team. That makes it a really empowering, inspiring, fun place to be. We are very stable in our workforce, which is quite rare in Formula One. The way we operate, with a family feel, means people really will stay with the team for a long time.”
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
