Data Driven Avanade Issue 2 | Page 3

FOREWORD
FORMULA ONE DESIGNERS ARE THE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONS
OF MULTITASKING. NOT ONLY ARE THEY REFINING AND IMPROVING
THE CARS YOU SEE OUT ON TRACK THIS SEASON, AT THE SAME
TIME THEY ARE DEVISING NEXT YEAR’S ALL-NEW MACHINES. AND,
DURING THE FEW HOURS A DAY THAT THEY’RE NOT AT THEIR DESKS,
THEY’RE PROBABLY THINKING ABOUT 2015 AS WELL.
The pace is relentless, and the pressure
always felt. What marks 2014 as a standout
year are the sport’s technical changes, and
they are this year’s headache as well as the
next. The effect is one that is found in many
areas of enterprise in these challenging
economic times: you’ve got more work to
do, and no extra resource. It’s how you do
more with less, and this is Avanade’s task in
assisting Lotus F1 Team achieve
maximum efficiency.
Today, the vast majority of car development
in F1 takes place far away from the world’s
race tracks on computer screens back at the
factory. In years gone by they had a separate
test team travelling to Silverstone, Italy, Spain
and the South of France, covering several
thousands of real life testing kilometers every
week. No longer. With cost cutting restrictions,

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there is now a reliance on Computer Aided
Design, Computational Fluid Dynamics and
Race Car Simulations.
Using these tools to develop the 2013 and
2014 cars in tandem is demanding and
requires efficient use of resources and
coordinated communication between the
design tools and designers.
In this second issue of Data Driven, we will
discover how the Lotus F1 Team design office
juggles its dual development targets.