Mercedes-AMG Petronas and the “Fastest R&D Lab on Earth”
F1 has been called the fastest R&D lab on earth. Our partnership with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One racing team is deeper than sticking TIBCO’s logo on Lewis Hamilton’s helmet. We’re analytics partners, and we learn together.
For example, you might be surprised to learn how important humans are in F1, the ultimate tech-fueled sport. Chief race strategist James Vowles shares that teamwork, informed by analytics, is a key to their success:
Race strategy is not a task for one person anymore, as it was a long time ago. It’s now a team of people with a mathematics or an engineering background that are able to look at a race, not just as a series of laps, but in a probabilistic manner. In other words, every decision that you make, every lap you complete, every bit of data that comes in has a probability attached to it, so you can understand whether or not you should be stopping this lap, who you’re fighting, and what you should be telling the driver to do.
- James Vowles, Chief Strategist at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport
F1 teams make decisions in milliseconds. But humans make the final call:
We have a team of people on the pit wall and back at the factory, all providing and analyzing information during the race. As chief strategist, the final decision then generally rests with myself, and the decision can sometimes be made in a matter of milliseconds. Now, we have a number of complex simulations and models that help us make the decision possible, but ultimately it’s a human that makes the final call.
- James Vowles, Chief Strategist at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport
Teams that win seven world championships in a row are worth studying. Vowles teaches us that teamwork, informed by analytics, makes the difference.
For more from the Mercedes data and analytics team, watch this:
