Nowhere is the relationship between man and machine as complementary as in the backrooms of the F1 racing circuit. It may be all about speed and endurance at the track, but from the pre-race preparation right through to the final lap, the measured calm and patience of those in the data center is what counts. Only when the flag drops is the slightly unpredictable human factor brought into play. Before that, it’s all data. Despite the sport’s growing dependence on technology, however, no one is saying that the technology is more important than the driver. “The best driver cannot do anything nowadays with a car that is not competitive, but it is equally true that if you have the best car, it is unlikely that an average driver can use it to reach the top,” says Luca Mazzocco, the account manager of the Renault F1 team. “That is simply because it is not like in the past when a car or two would stand out as massively superior to the others. Now there is quite a tough fight for the championship. So you have to have the top driver and give him the best machine. Nobody can risk giving an average driver a top machine,” he says. The technical team that works in the background performs several critical jobs including the maintaining of the temperature and pressure in the car and monitoring of gap between the car and the track - using laser technology -during the race. That’s not to say that all the tricky mechanical adjustments have been taken away from the driver. Take the differential, which allows each of the driving wheels to rotate at different speeds, while supplying equal torque to each of them. The differential in F1 cars is not as static as in other cars, and can be made stiffer or softer. That adjustment is left to the driver. Kevin Isaac, the regional director of Symantec, the data management company, says information is critical in car design and improving performance in what is a highly competitive sport. “Formula One represents an industry that pushes the boundaries of safety, speed, technology and design. Symantec supports information delivery, safety and availability in a similarly critical way. Through this relationship our technology is tested to the limit by a customer that is constantly striving for more,” says Isaac. Although Symantec had worked with the Renault F1 team since the mid-Nineties, the turning point in the relationship came in 2001 when Renault bought the Benetton Formula One team in a deal worth $120 million. According to Mazzocco, the importance of the Symantec-Renault relationship has grown with the importance of information technology in the F1 arena. “Now IT is an essential part of our operation. The speed at which you can access your data and the reliability with which you can do that is very important,” he says. In many ways a test car is a more advanced car than an actual racing car because it is on test cars that new technologies are tried. The hard work done during the testing session helps a team choose the best car for the race. According to Graeme K. Hackland, the IT manager of the Renault F1 team, data is the key to all that happens at the track, and when. “Knowing what state the car is in at any moment is crucial. It assists with strategic decisions on when to make pitstops, how much fuel is required at each stop, when to push and when to back off,” says Hackland. Asked about Renault F1’s relationship with Symantec, he says, “The relationship started in 1997 with Veritas, as Symantec was then known. They are our closest IT partner, whom we share information with about our projects and IT strategy. In turn we get to make input into the product groups around product development,” he says. The areas of cooperation between Symantec and Renault F1 include data security, e-mail archiving and backup/restore. The car on the tarmac works pretty much like an aeroplane except that the wings are mounted inversely so that airflow keeps the vehicle hugging the ground. This force, which can exceed one-and-a-half tons, allows the car to maintain corners at high speed. For engineers, the trick is to harness the forces of aerodynamics but keep the car light and strong. “We don’t want to over-engineer a part, because if a part is too strong, it means that it is too heavy. So it might just do the job it is supposed to do and then break shortly afterwards. This is why the life of a part is so short,” says Mazzocco. Data is available in real time while the car is on the track. The flow of data gives a clear picture of what is happening when the cars are in motion. Mazzocco explains how data accumulated during the testing stage is pieced together. “There is limited bandwidth at the track so one can’t get loads of data. Hence microwave telemetry is applied through which the car hooks on to the data center when it is on the track and sends packets of information. When the car disappears at the corners, contact is lost and the data center continues to follow the lap. Generally it takes about three laps to download the data for one complete lap,” says Mazzocco. Once the data is available for the entire race, lap-by-lap, the team discusses how the car behaved at each point in the circuit and what the driver felt. Laurent Delifer, the co-president and chief operations officer of NavLink, the network solutions provider that is part owned by US telecoms firm AT&T, says collecting every bit of information is desirable but that the data isn’t everything. “You should never have a situation in which the decision-making is done by the machine. The data center should give the driver all the information in an organized manner so that the driver can make an informed decision. What the machine does is reassure you. It’s a reassurance that your decision is the right one,” says Delifer. Besides providing back-end support to speeding cars, the technology companies find a value proposition in being seen to be a part of the racing business. CNBC estimated Symantec’s 2006 investment in the F1 racing team at $1 million. Symantec’s Isaac says the company has derived real returns on its investment by being able to demonstrate to customers the results of its work for Renault. Mazzocco sums up his company’s relationship with its technology supplier. Symantec may be supplying to companies that are much bigger than Renault but this is a difficult environment. “Also it is good to see partners staying with us through years that have been difficult on the circuit for the Renault team. But they have stuck with us and they continue to believe they can do it,” he says.

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