1 information management in formula one david france, it director, brawn gp
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Information Management in Formula One
David France, IT Director, Brawn GP
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
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
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111999
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2009
notable eventsnotable events championship positionschampionship positions
Currentposition
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!
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
We have to keep developing the car
DecJan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep OctActivity
2009 Car Build
2009 Season
2009 Car Development
2010 New CarConcepts, Design & Build
2010 Season
2010 Car Development
Nov DecJan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov
Date 2009 2010
Racing
RacingWinter Tests
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
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 dataWind Tunnel run dataCAD part files
FEA / Stress Analysis resultsEngine & Gearbox Dyno test resultsR&D Lab testsCAD part files
Vehicle Dynamics simulationsRace telemetry dataVideo analysis data
E
nd to end process flow
Information Produced
Challenges we face
• Large file sizes• Fast access times• Synchronisation
(between race circuit & factory)
• High availability & failover
• Volatility & growth
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
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
Now we have large pools of storage
5.5TB
Email,Databases,
CADdata
140TB
Aero, Car, Analysis, Video, Home Shares,
Archive, Mirrors data
SATA 2 DiskParallel SCSI Disk
SAN Symphony
SATA 2 Disk
10TB
Race Team data
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
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
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
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”
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 1st , RB 2nd
• “Your closest rival is your team mate”
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 VowlesRace Strategy Engineer
“Effective information management is a pre-requisite to success in Formula One”
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Simply search for the Information on Demand UK group
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