Data Driven Issue 04
“IN FORMULA ONE THE CHAIN OF DECISION MAKING IS SMALLER AND, IN COLLABORATION
WITH AVANADE, LOTUS F1 TEAM HAS BEEN ABLE TO MAKE THAT PROCESS SLICKER, FASTER
AND MORE RELIABLE STILL.” SIR JACKIE STEWART
YOU USED TO WIN CHAMPIONSHIPS BY FEEL.
NOW YOU DO IT WITH DATA.
CONTINUED...
“THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE NOW, THOUGH, FROM MY ERA IS THE
PROLIFERATION OF DATA...
Before computers came along,
teams relied on the driver to
provide all the feedback. Drivers
had to be part racer, part engineer.
“That’s how we had to think, we
had to know what it was that we
were feeling, to understand the
mechanical movement, and identify
any problems,” says the 74-year-old.
“The fastest drivers in the world used
to be the ones that could paint their
mechanic a colorful picture. That
was what we now describe as Data
Acquisition. The only sensors were
my hands and my backside.”
Now you have literally hundreds
of sensors on the car, which not
only tell you if there’s a problem
instantly, but also show you where
incremental performance gains
can be made, provided the data
08
is correctly analyzed and acted
upon. While the driver is still a
key component of the racing car,
he cannot win without the help
of a rank of engineers staring at
computer screens in the garage and
technicians and analysts back at the
factory looking at the spikes. “If the
driver makes a mistake, the team
knows about it before he’s even had
time to think of an excuse.”
“The technology is always moving
forward. The kinds of data we
now use to refine the car in every
conceivable way to make it fractions
of a second faster were unthinkable
when I was racing, and if you were
to know now where we’ll be in
just a few years the teams would
collectively slap their foreheads and
think ‘why didn’t we think of that?’
“Formula One has always been a
huge gateway for technology, which
then filters down to automotive
and other industries. It’s also a
very good example of how quickly
things can be done; much faster
than the military, much faster than
multinational corporations, than
pharmaceuticals for example,
because they’ve got to wait for
approvals from a committee
comprised of people who haven’t
seen that technology before and
don’t always understand it.”
In Formula One the chain of decision
making is smaller and, in collaboration
with Avanade, Lotus F1 Team has been
able to make that process slicker, faster
and more reliable still.