Data at F1 speed

Getting data back to the AT&T Williams UK HQ at Grove in Oxfordshire is a vital task.

The multifarious engineering data generated during practice sessions, qualifying and the race over each Grand Prix weekend, as well as from test sessions, is vital for the team's data analysts, aerodynamicists and designers back at the factory. With less than 20% of team staff physically present at Grand Prix, a significant amount of analytical work is conducted away from the track and back at HQ. Fast, secure and robust data transfer is thus mission critical in a sport which lives and dies by intelligence derived from every operating parameter of race car operation being measured, logged and ultimately analysed.

"Before AT&T became involved with the team we needed to arrange our own connectivity at every race venue. It was expensive to get the required connectivity for temporary periods and we were exposed to fluctuating standards of service and support in the 20 or so different locations from Melbourne to Montreal where we set up racing or testing operations", explained Alex Burns, Williams COO.

Now AT&T is working to implement dedicated connectivity permanently installed at most Grand Prix venues and the major test tracks year round.

AT&T Williams have already seen immediate benefits. During a recent pre-season test session in Jerez there was a five fold improvement in network performance on the previous solutions.

Historically transferring 100MB files between Jerez in southern Spain and Oxford in the UK averaged 40-50 minutes. Since the deployment of the AT&T global network 100MB file transfers have averaged 8.5 minutes.

This improvement was not simply because of increased bandwidth. Previously the team transferred data on a shared network and had to contend with other customers using a common wide area network provided on a first come first served basis.