AMF1: Data on wheels…very fast wheels

Time. Irreversible, irreplaceable.

And how we love to measure it.

In 1894 it means recording how long it takes to speed in new-fangled jalopies between Paris and Rouen, France (Le Petit Journal Horseless Carriages Contest). Chronographs mounted on dashboards serve as both clocks and stopwatches, and the link between high-performance racing and high-performance timekeeping is irrevocably forged.

The gasoline-fueled engine then is just a few years old, but already our impulse to establish the supremacy of one automobile over another is ascendant, our need for speed impossible to resist. Credit adrenaline, the very stuff of competition. It improves our reflexes and focus, feeds more oxygen to our brains, and helps us push ourselves to the limit.

An international phenomenon

By 1903 daredevils racing their cars through the French countryside cause so many crashes and so much calamity that officials intervene for the public good. Work commences on an official network of roads linking cities and towns. Stop signs and speed limits, laws and penalties—all follow in turn as automobiles re-shape our world.

But the sensation-seeking pastime of auto racing endures as organized competitions spread across France, including the 1922 French Grand Prix—the first season that Aston Martin enters motor racing events.

It isn’t just patrons and participants who feel the thrill. Spectators throng to witness impressive feats of drivers’ skills tested at the frontiers of engineering and human ingenuity.

Since its inaugural season in 1950, Formula One^™ (commonly known as Formula 1 or F1^®) reliably ranks among the world’s premier forms of motorsport. Today F1^® seasons of practice sessions, qualifying time trials, and championship races unfold across weekends of high-pressure track time for race teams, and high-wattage entertainment for I / AM fans around the world. Hollywood is on the circuit too, with F1 starring Brad Pitt hitting theatres in 2025. Even so, the multi-billion-dollar sport now is being transformed in real time, by the breadth and depth of ways performance is measured down to the millisecond.

That is, by data.

In 1958 Aston Martin’s future as a racing organization looks assured. 

• Its DBR1 model places first in the Nürburgring 1000 kilometer (625-mile) race.
• A year later the DBR1 celebrates a 1-2 showing at the finish line of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Grand Prix of Endurance.
• And 1960’s DB4 GT Lightweight claims victory on the Goodwood Circuit.

Also in 1960, Aston Martin makes its only F1^® appearance in the 20th century. Unfortunately, the weight of the DBR5’s front-mounted engine isn’t adequately offset by the car’s lightweight chassis and independent suspension. An absence of six decades on the F1^® circuit follows.

It's big news in F1^® racing, then, when the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One^TM Team re-enters the ranks of elite motorsports in 2021.

Data on wheels

Of course, high-performance track racing isn’t the only industry to evolve since Aston Martin’s first F1^® attempt in 1960. Today the digitalization of everything means cars are as much computer as transport, as much about data as adrenaline. Because every car Aston Martin Aramco produces is a data beast, every vehicle a hyper-computer. That is, data on wheels…very fast wheels.

Aston Martin Aramco Formula One^TM cars are tuned with hundreds of sensors, each generating more than one million data points per second, from their ignition and Mercedes power units to their accelerometers, drive shafts, and rear suspension. An ecosystem of insights is integral to every AMR car’s design—design driven by data from performance on the track, and performance driven by design at the Aston Martin Racing Technology Campus (AMRTC) in Silverstone.

Stuart Bailey, Head of Infrastructure at Aston Martin Aramco, frames the story this way: “F1 is a sport that’s measured in milliseconds, so access to data is crucial, because it allows us to design, develop, and optimize our racing cars in order to achieve results on the track.” Among the numerous channels of data created on race days are engine and gearbox speeds; tire temperature, pressures, and degradation; and fuel consumption.

43 trillion reasons

This hot data empowers trackside engineers to make decisions in real time about race strategy. Stuart says, “We receive telemetry data from the car via microwave transmission. We also offload a substantial amount of data via a cable in the pit lane.” At Mission Control back at the AMRTC in Silverstone an additional 40 engineers run simulations in near real time to help the pit crew tweak car settings, including engine mode, all to optimize performance for a particular track’s profile and the day’s weather. The math is staggering, with the average F1^® car engine control unit (ECU) performing 43 trillion calculations per race.

Forecast: windy with a high chance of flow 

Another tranche of essential data comes from AMRTC’s state-of-the-art wind tunnel. One component of the ‘formula’ in Formula One™ racing places limits on on-track testing to just a handful of days per year, so simulations in test facilities are a critical adjunct. Aston Martin F1^® Team’s CoreWeave Wind Tunnel is the first such facility constructed in a decade and is already delivering results, helping engineers to analyze computational fluid dynamics (CFD) data and better understand how air flows around each component of Aston Martin Aramco racecars. Simulations run the gamut, from variables in downforce and drag, to ride height sensitivity, yaw, roll, and pitch. Photo-imaging for time-averaged visualization of flow structures around and over cars ups the ante even further, enabled by capabilities not available in wind tunnels constructed even 20 years ago.

But because recent F1^® regulations also place stringent limits on a racing team’s use of wind tunnels, speedy access to the right data during simulations equips aerodynamicists with insights they need to more efficiently fine tune a vehicle’s performance using proprietary algorithms and heavy computing, a job for which NetApp’s intelligent data infrastructure is purpose-built. Files from wind tunnel testing programs can be 100s of gigabytes each. Moving that data seamlessly and quickly makes a difference on the grid where every competitor brings their A-game, every millisecond of every race.

Stuart says, “A unified storage strategy gives us access to all of our data where we need it, when we need it. It’s crucial to our ability to make split second decisions.” Central to that strategy is NetApp StorageGRID for petabyte-scale object storage on a consolidated platform. With data assets aggregated in one place the team is freed from the headache of time-consuming orchestration of data sets across multiple legacy systems. Consolidated storage also reduces Aston Martin F1^® Team’s attack surface even as ransomware protection and built-in security controls like encryption for data at rest and in transit further bolster the organization’s cyber resilience.

Stuart shares a story from the 2023 Australian Grand Prix about how Aston Martin F1^® Team’s game-changing data strategy and newfound agility already pay dividends: “Our use of NetApp technology to ensure we set up our car correctly between Free Practice 3 and qualifying was essential. Decisions enabled by NetApp’s technology led us to a 3-4 podium result and a points haul in the race.” Aston Martin F1^® Team’s full 2023 season resulted in eight podiums.

A key member of the Aramco Formula One^TM Team since it returned to the F1^® circuit in 2021, NetApp is a trusted advisor and technology partner:

• At their main technical campus and at global tracks, Aston Martin Aramco Team uses NetApp FlexPod as their core virtualized compute platform.
• They also provision a NetApp ASA A-Series array for all-flash block storage. 
• Finally, Stuart’s data strategy includes NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights to monitor Aston Martin Aramco’s complete infrastructure through a single pane of glass, and NetApp BlueXP for unified control of storage and data services.

The result is a high-performance computing (HPC) network equal to the high-performance demands of the racecars it fuels, even as transformative technologies like AI enter the picture.

AI-accelerated engineering answers “What if...?” 

Advanced HPC simulations to prototype an ideal car in the Formula One™ preseason is time-consuming, labor intensive, and costly. Testing prototyped parts is one reason the saying, “Time is money,” is made vividly clear on an F1^® racetrack. Now consider the computer-aided design (CAD) and testing process of, say, a new diffuser for an Aston Martin F1^® car. The component shoulders an outsize burden, being responsible for accelerating the flow of air under a vehicle to create an area of low pressure, thereby increasing downforce, or the ‘stickiness’ of a car to the track as it travels upwards of 125mph toward a hoped-for checkered flag. So, when an engineer envisions a new diffuser design, they ask, “What if...?” and an expensive race against an unforgiving clock begins.

Enter AI-accelerated engineering at Aston Martin F1^® headquarters in Silverstone. A new set of AI-based tools gives engineers new ways to overcome limits imposed on several fronts. For one, only a few years ago F1^® teams had unlimited 24 / 7 / 365 use of wind tunnels to test prototypes and tweak vehicle performance; then new F1^® regulations dramatically limited testing to 65 runs per week; that window is now narrowed to just 40 and is only one aspect on a sliding scale of allowances related to aerodynamic testing. On-track performance is another. The remaining challenges are a familiar combination of factors beyond the wind tunnel, namely time + people + money.

But with an AI assist, the Aston Martin F1^® Team now can make advanced computational simulations of diffuser prototypes in an open CAD space outside the regulatory scope of F1^®. Using data lakes brimming with insights from past races—velocity field predictions, drag coefficients, individual track characteristics, more—engineers can speed past limits inherent in the ‘iteration paradigm’ where many races against the clock are lost. What once took hours, can now be accomplished in minutes, meaning results from this AI-driven modeling are discoverable in quasi-real-time. The speed with which this AI-driven process leads to better performance is a force multiplier for improved outcomes once the F1^® season of Grands Prix begins.

Two racecars, a crew of 50, and 40 tons of equipment.

That’s the logistical puzzle for Aston Martin Aramco to solve as it circumnavigates the globe to compete in more than 24 cities on Formula 1’s calendar of time trials and races in any given year. Add in F1^®’s target of producing Net Zero Carbon by 2030 and the challenge only compounds. It’s obvious that a sport tied historically to fossil fuel emissions would begin with strategies like all cars on the grid being designed to use 100% sustainable biofuels. The Aston Martin F1^® Team will work specifically with Aramco to produce an advanced sustainable fuel. But it turns out more than 50% of motorsports’ impact on the environment is generated off the track.

On that front, Aston Martin F1^® Team and NetApp are on the job across multiple dimensions. Stuart says, “NetApp technology really helps promote sustainable storage infrastructure.” In part through virtualization solutions like FlexPod, as well as through storage compaction and data compression de-duplication: both help keep data sets lean for a smaller storage footprint. He continues, “Every strategic action minimizes the amount of kit we need to run in our data center, and every kilo saved means a reduction in CO2 output and air freight costs.”

Aston Martin F1^® Team is destined to perform—in the design studio, in the wind tunnel, in the pit, on the track. Stuart says, “There’s a real buzz in the factory on the Monday morning after a race,“ which is when everything learned over the past 72 hours in Abu Dhabi or Melbourne is added to Aston Martin F1^® Team’s knowledge base from decades past. This incremental increase in wisdom born of data is what leads to ever higher performing racecars and satisfies what the AMF1 team calls a ‘podium proclivity’, with the best yet to come.

Every F1^® driver today shares the same formative beginning: like Lance Stroll, they start by karting, including the team’s Head of F1^® Academy and driver ambassador Jessica Hawkins, who became the first woman in almost five years to test a modern F1^® car in 2023. Along the way drivers discover the thrill of adrenaline and imagine the rush of hoisting a trophy on an F1^® podium.

I / AM Community

The I / AM community shares the passion of Aston Martin Aramco’s owner, drivers, engineers, designers, pit crew, management, marketers, more. With seven million followers across Instagram and TikTok, the @astonmartinf1 fanbase is all in on all things British racing green.

Membership in I / AM includes unique fan engagements and exclusive content:

• Experiences like paddock meet and greets at Grands Prix across the world.
• Tours of the AMR Technology Campus in Silverstone. 
• Autographed driver cards.
• Oh-so-green TikTok filters. 
• And discounts on special edition teamwear merch.

Niamh from Girls Across the Grid says, “I’ve made lifelong friends.” Her commitment to AMF1 perfectly illustrates the depth of fandom the brand inspires in its global audience.

While the sport and its technical capabilities are dramatically different than in 1894 during that first road race from Paris to Rouen, the impulse to compete and outperform against the clock remains as enduring—and alluring—as ever. It turns out time doesn’t change everything.