In a world where technology is turning even the most unlikely sci-fi into reality, the cutting-edge F1 team is working with its partner to explore every area of technology that could give them an advantage, on track and off.
As Chief Technology Officer for Cisco UK and Ireland, Chintan Patel works with the company’s sports and entertainment partners to “push technology to the edge” and he believes there are some big advances on the horizon for F1.
“Milliseconds matter in motorsport and the underlying technology that powers what McLaren does as a racing team is really important,” he says. “Our work is all about making them faster but also pushing the envelope for fan experiences.
“There is a huge range of technologies we can use to do that and it all started off during the pandemic, when racing wasn’t going on and there was a need for teams to collaborate in new ways.”
We’ll talk more about Lando in your living room later. For now, the tech and innovation at McLaren is all about big data, high speeds and finding ways to bring people together even though they are miles apart.
“In the same way that the car continually evolves and has new capabilities added to it, so does our technology,” says Patel. “What we’re exploring with McLaren is how to get faster, reliable communications across the entire team network.
“It’s about anything that can be connected, being connected. We’re seeing this whole concept of the Internet of Things – and more and more things are being connected from a trackside perspective.
“More and more assets are being connected so they can be tracked. Sensors are being put on all sorts of things and there is a huge amount of telemetry coming off all of these components.”
There is an increasing strain on data transmission in F1 and Patel and his team are constantly pushing to explore networking technologies to expand McLaren’s capability. Their current focus is on a new form of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6E.
This will not only allow more things to be connected securely but it comes with added intelligence, enabling important data – such as live in-car telemetry – to be given priority over, say, someone in the garage checking their Facebook feed.
In F1, small things matter and this is a good example of a behind the scenes innovation that McLaren and their partner are exploring right now that could start to pay dividends very soon.
“It’s in the test bed stage right now, so the coming months we’ll use to test and then what…
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