Does Formula 1 Tech Still Trickle Down to Road Cars?
Oracle Red Bull Racing Team Principal Christian Horner and top brass at AT&T weigh in on the relationship between F1 and the road cars we buy.
For decades, a tech-arms race between teams has driven the highly competitive environment of Formula 1. A byproduct of that arms race has turned Formula 1 into a test bed of innovations that eventually trickle down to the consumer cars that we buy off dealership lots today. Though with game changing thanks to industry disruptors like Tesla and the advent of software defined vehicles, is the relationship between Formula 1 and consumer cars still the same?
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We were invited to the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas to talk about the relationship between the sport, technology, and road cars with Oracle Red Bull Racing (ORBR) Team Principal Christian Horner, AT&T CMO Kellyn Kenny, and AT&T COO Jeff McElfresh. We were granted rare access behind the scenes of a top tier F1 team during a race weekend to see how much tech plays a role into each round of the championship while talking about the direction that innovation flows from one realm to the other.
Naturally, we wanted to know more about AT&T’s partnership with Red Bull Racing. When most of us think about AT&T our minds go to their smartphone plans, but the communications giant has been handling ORBR’s connectivity as a partner since 2011 and is growing that relationship for 2025. The partnership has allowed Red Bull Racing to be the only team on the F1 grid with connectivity done completely through high-speed fiber.
That allows for massive amounts of data transferring from one place to another very quickly. We saw it in action over the race weekend but were not allowed to photograph the bespoke set up. We can tell you that both cars on ORBR’s team has its own dedicated 6-foot tall server rack with an identical back up. That’s two servers per car. Those servers can send crucial data to Red Bull Racing’s HQ in the UK for processing. The systems that AT&T developed to help ORBR’s transfer massive amounts of data at high speeds could become crucial to a future where many cars may have Level 3 and above autonomous features.
According to McElfresh, transfer speeds are still a way off from where he believes they would need to be for wide adoption for cloud-based, AI-driven autonomous driving. “It’s about a seven-year trickle down,” said McElfresh. He elaborated that currently AT&T handles data streams from ORBR’s F1 cars at a 5x increase over where it started in 2011, but he believes that there will be a 20x jump in data streams and as Formula 1 gets to that point, we may start to see a jump in data stream bandwidth and speed in road cars as well.
It isn’t just Formula 1 that benefits from the constant push to advance technology. Beyond the obvious branding opportunities for technology sponsors and partners, the innovation path is a two-way street, with Formula 1 serving as a test bed for AT&T. “It’s sort of a natural fit,” said Kenny. “If you look at the work we’re doing with auto manufacturers to try and truly—from an Internet of Things perspective—enhance the experience for somebody who’s driving their Ford or Tesla. We’re trying to take the learnings from here [Formula 1] and apply them out there as well.”
