1. 1 Information Management in Formula One David France, IT Director, Brawn GP

2. Who we are Member of the exclusive formula one “club” A global shop window Highly competitive environment Performance improvements are measured in terms of 1,000ths of a second Technology reliant Pushing technology for competitive advantage (materials, ICT, etc.) But not “bleeding” edge Secretive and security conscious

3. A brief history of the team British American Racing: Founded in 1997 by British American Tobacco, Craig Pollock and Adrian Reynard Acquired the old Tyrell Racing team Honda: Became joint shareholder with BAT in December 2004 Sole owner in December 2005 Announced departure from F1 December 2008 Became Brawn GP in March 2009 notable eventschampionship positions Current position

4. The Brawn GP Team Operate from Brackley based factory Race tracks around the world A light engineering business With the race team acting as a “mobile” front office We have Mercedes Benz High Performance Engines 450 staff Everyone is passionate about motor racing!

5. To be successful in Formula One You must be able to design, build, test and race a car… that has the right balance between speed, reliability and safety and be able to develop and improve the performance of the car during the race season… at a faster pace than the competition

6. We have to keep developing the car DecJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOct Activity 2009 Car Build 2009 Season 2009 Car Development 2010 New Car Concepts, Design & Build 2010 Season 2010 Car Development NovDecJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNov Date 20092010 Racing Winter Tests

7. At Brackley we have High tech. purpose-built facility Sophisticated engineering manufacturing plant Wind tunnel Dyno CFD Super Computer Mixture of business application systems Common e.g. CAD, CAM, ERP, etc Specialist e.g. Aero, CFD, FEA, etc

8. We capture a lot of data … CFD Aero Design Manufacture Model Wind Tunnel Test Evaluate Design Manufacture Dyno Test R&D Lab Test Track Test Evaluate/Approve Prepare Race Assess Performance CFD simulation data Wind Tunnel run data CAD part files FEA / Stress Analysis results Engine & Gearbox Dyno test results R&D Lab tests CAD part files Vehicle Dynamics simulations Race telemetry data Video analysis data  End to end process flow  Information Produced

9. Challenges we face Large file sizes Fast access times Synchronisation (between race circuit & factory) High availability & failover Volatility & growth

10. How we deal with those challenges WAN capacity 10GB at the factory 6MB/s between factory & circuit Data synchronisation Copy of race critical data held at circuit “Real time” synch of car telemetry data to factory Video analysis to circuit between sessions SAN architecture Virtualisation Data mirroring

11. We had fragmented islands of storage 4TB Car, Groups, Aero & Other 1.2TB Home Shares & Archive High Performance Fibre Channel Disk Slower Performance (older) Disk Medium Performance Parallel SCSI Disk 1.95TB CAD Data 68GB Mail Archive 130GB R&D Database 135GB SQL D/B Server 1 135GB SQL D/B Server 2 135GB PDM Database 7TB Analysis Data

12. Now we have large pools of storage 5.5TB Email, Databases, CAD data 140TB Aero, Car, Analysis, Video, Home Shares, Archive, Mirrors data SATA 2 Disk Parallel SCSI Disk SAN Symphony SATA 2 Disk 10TB Race Team data

13. The Competitive Environment Each circuit is different Race cars are built for circuit characteristics Limited practice time before Saturday qualifying The race team needs to respond quickly to: Car dynamics (e.g. under/over steering, etc) Tyre wear Weather conditions Competitor strategy & performance

14. Preparing for the race – Pre-event Check data from previous year at this circuit Use this data to predict car performance Run simulations Run tests Analyse results Specify car build Configuration to suit the circuit Specific components

15. Preparing for the race – During practice Factory based team work closely with race team at circuit Capture data 60GB data for a race weekend Analyse data Identify car set-up changes Assess our performance against competitors Decide race strategy

16. During the race We monitor The start Timing data TV coverage Performance of the car Health of the car Actions of others The weather We react as the race unfolds Change strategy Telling drivers when “to push”

17. Example – Barcelona GP 2009 Strategy for both cars Qualifying – grid positions Start – first corner Assessed race outcome Problem for JB Re-assessed strategy for each car Changed strategy for JB Race outcome JB 1 st, RB 2 nd  “Your closest rival is your team mate”

18. The importance of information “The difference between making a good or bad decision can be as much as several positions by the end of the race and therefore having the most accurate data possible at all times is key to having a successful strategy.” James Vowles Race Strategy Engineer

19. “Effective information management is a pre-requisite to success in Formula One”

20. Follow us @ioduk and use our hashtag #ioduk Simply search for the Information on Demand UK group Subscribe to the IOD UK blog at iodukblog.com