Press release from Oracle.
Fantastic Applied Tech story.
New season, new challenges
Oracle Red Bull Racing faced a big question heading into 2022: How do you top one of the most thrilling Formula One seasons of all time? Drivers Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez collected 23 podium finishes in 22 races, and Verstappen was crowned F1 Drivers’ Champion after a season-long duel with rival Lewis Hamilton.
Determined to build on their success, Oracle and Red Bull Racing enhanced their partnership for the 2022 season, including use of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) for analytics-backed race strategy. “Oracle Cloud enabled us to make race-day decisions that helped Max Verstappen win the 2021 Drivers’ Championship,” says Christian Horner, Oracle Red Bull Racing team principal and CEO. In addition to strategy, the partnership will apply Oracle Cloud technologies across Red Bull Racing’s operations, helping the team optimize engine development, enhance training for up-and-coming drivers using AI and machine learning, and engage with fans in new ways.
During its championship season, the team’s engineers used OCI to run billions of computer simulations to prepare their race strategies and to help them make real-time decisions during the races, such as when to make a pit stop to change tires. In 2022 OCI will let Oracle Red Bull Racing cost effectively run more simulations faster, and expand the variety of data the team can model and analyze.
The 2022 season also brings a new car design and regulation changes for all F1 teams, changes meant to allow for more passing and more exciting races. Teams will need to quickly learn a lot about how the new cars perform and factor that into their strategies, a challenge that OCI-powered computer simulations will support on race day and in the preparations before it. “Always in the end, this comes down to a human being making a decision, but that decision gets informed with more accurate data,” says Guillaume Cattelani, chief engineer of technology and analysis tools for Oracle Red Bull Racing and Red Bull Technology. “So, becoming a master at modeling and execution in real time is an advantage.”
Expanding a racing partnership
The partnership between Oracle and Red Bull Racing will let race strategists and engineers assess a greater variety and volume of data even faster. By containerizing the team’s simulation application and running it on OCI’s Arm-based virtual servers, the team last year accelerated simulation processing speeds by 10X, giving race strategists more time to make the right call. The team also increased the number of strategy simulations it could run by 1,000X compared with on-premises systems used in the past. Meantime, OCI significantly reduced the cost of those simulations, enabling the team to improve performance on the track while keeping within F1’s stringent spending regulations. “Discovering and reacting to opportunities quickly is crucial to our success on and off the track, and Oracle is integral in that effort,” Horner says.
The partnership will also expand the use of technology to build a closer connection with fans. Oracle and Red Bull Racing last season launched The Red Bull Racing Paddock, a loyalty platform that drove a 9X increase in membership sign-ups. Powered by Oracle CrowdTwist Loyalty and Engagement and OCI, The Paddock provides a direct line of communication between fans and the team, letting fans last season submit thousands of questions to the team and redeem 35,000 digital rewards. Additions in 2022 include the ability for fans to create user-generated content and personalize the information they receive to suit their interests.
More Red Bull innovations
Red Bull runs one of the world’s most successful driver-development programs—7 of the 20 drivers who will be on the grid to start the 2022 season are graduates of the Red Bull Junior program. Oracle is partnering with Red Bull Advanced Technologies on projects that will apply AI and machine learning to racing video and other data, allowing junior drivers to better understand how data can help them fine-tune their driving styles to reduce lap times.
Oracle also is working with Red Bull Powertrains to develop the next generation of F1 engines, set to debut in 2026. Red Bull Powertrains will use OCI to optimize modeling of a new engine combustion chamber to reduce costs while improving performance.
Lastly, the creation of Oracle Red Bull Racing eSports marks the evolution of a partnership in one of the world’s fastest growing sports industries, electronic sports. Taking a cue from the real-world team, the eSports division will use OCI-powered analytics to help drivers optimize car setup and improve race strategy, and to provide training that can help them improve their lap times on any virtual track, in any simulated weather.
These kinds of creative, industry-changing uses of technology help explain why Oracle was eager to expand its partnership with Red Bull Racing. “Red Bull Racing has been more committed to using technology to gain an edge than any other F1 team, and it is paying off,” says Ariel Kelman, Oracle executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “Our commitment to this partnership reflects our belief that OCI is a strategic weapon on race day, creates the most exciting fan experience in sports, and can help define the future of F1.”
Who is doing the Red Bull power plants now that Honda is gone?
They previously had Renault engines.
On a side note, Christian Horner is insufferable.
Ought to be an interesting season. Saw an article a few weeks ago that said drivers and crews must be vaxxed.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=f1+drivers+crews+vaccine
Oracle just had an online virtual session on Analytics and machine learning based on what they were doing with the Red Bull racing team.
Non-Linear Programming is bizarre.
The 50s & 60s F1 racing was REAL racing by pro drivers, and I enjoyed it more than today’s hi-tech offerings, with the drivers a close second to the machinery and software.