If you’re a tech enthusiast, there’s a sport just for you.
We’re talking about the #1 motorsport in the world, Formula 1.
Oracle, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft—all of them are now part of the F1 scene, sponsoring or offering their tech to teams in recent seasons.
This sport has always been synonymous with technology and innovation. Technology has always been at the heart of every champion car, bringing together the best mechanics—and now engineers and developers—to come up with the best solutions to make cars go faster, brake better, be lighter, and get every detail right to be the best on the track and win championships.
In the last couple of seasons, many enterprise software companies have put their best technologies at the service of teams, as Oracle does with OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) to help Max Verstappen and the Red Bull F1 Team win the last three world championships, breaking numerous records.
So, for every tech enthusiast and every F1 fan, let’s look at how OCI fuels Red Bull Racing’s drive to win it all.
1. Race Simulations That Drive Winning Strategies
Back in the day, race strategy relied heavily on gut instinct. And make no mistake, those strategists brought invaluable experience and insight. But today, that approach alone just doesn’t cut it.
With a razor-thin margin for error, every second counts. Oracle, through OCI, removes the guesswork by bringing data, precision, and science into Red Bull Racing’s strategy. This gives Christian Horner, team principal of Oracle Red Bull Racing, the insights he needs to make top-tier decisions on race day.
As Max Verstappen puts it, “Due to all the simulations before the race even starts, it’s very easy to adapt a different strategy during the race because everything is there, everything is prepared.” That readiness gives the team a critical edge over competitors.
OCI’s muscle allows Red Bull Racing to run up to four billion simulations on a single race day. They analyze scenarios for tire wear, track conditions, and competitor tactics. Oracle’s Ariel Kelman explains: “The more computing horsepower you can provide, the more accurate your results are going to be. With cloud, it costs the same to run 1,000 servers for one hour as it does to run one server for 1,000 hours.” For Red Bull, that means simulations aren’t just a bit better—they’re 1,000 times better, bringing insights and prep that were once unimaginable.
With OCI’s cloud infrastructure, Red Bull can also ramp up computing power just before the race and dial it back afterward, maximizing performance while keeping costs low. Using ARM shapes, they gain vast parallelism, so they’re equipped to react in real-time.
It’s this combination of cutting-edge tech and Verstappen’s skill that helped Oracle Red Bull Racing break the record for the most wins in a season in 2022.
2. Make Real-Time Decisions with Confidence
But those billion simulations weren’t possible without the right data. The Red Bull Racing team gathers data for simulations from a variety of sources, ensuring they have real-time, high-quality insights to feed the simulations supported by OCI.
Here’s how they do it:
- On-Car Sensors: The car is like a moving data center, with hundreds of sensors tracking everything from tire wear to brake temperatures. These sensors feed data back to the team in real time, giving them a detailed view of how the car’s performing under race conditions.
- Telemetry Data: This tech sends data directly from the car to the team during the race. Telemetry data covers things like speed, engine health, and tire grip, so the engineers can keep tabs on car health and tweak strategies on the spot.
- Trackside Conditions: Cameras and sensors around the track monitor the weather, track temperature, and even humidity. These insights help Red Bull predict tire wear and fuel consumption—key factors that go into every simulation.
- Competitor Analysis: Red Bull also gathers data on competitors’ speeds, tire choices, and pit stop timings. This data provides essential context, helping strategists to simulate and anticipate competitors’ moves.
- Wind Tunnel and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics): Before race day, they use wind tunnels and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) to see how different setups will perform. This testing fine-tunes aerodynamics and optimizes the car’s speed and handling.
- Historical Data: Naturally, past race data is used to inform future strategies.
3. Build a High-Performance Engine from the Ground Up
Oracle’s journey starts way before race weekend—they’re a key player in the car design phase.
Currently, Oracle is working on the next generation of F1 hybrid engines, which come with new challenges like meeting sustainability goals, fuel requirements, and creating an efficient, reliable engine with over 6,500 components. This ambitious project aims to keep Red Bull fighting for championships in 2026 and beyond.
How is OCI helping here? Well, when Red Bull Racing made the bold decision to develop its own engine for the 2026 season, coinciding with new F1 regulations on hybrid engine design and sustainable fuels, they essentially became a startup within their own organization. Without a prior in-house engine development team, this was a daunting and complicated effort.
To tackle this challenge, Red Bull partnered strategically with Ford Motor Company, which brings expertise in hybrid technology. The collaboration is known as Red Bull Ford Powertrains.
OCI provides the high-performance computing needed to run complex simulations, such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models, to design the optimal spray pattern of fuel onto the engine’s cylinders. This process is akin to creating a digital twin of the engine—testing and refining every component virtually before it’s ever built.
4. Reduce Computing Costs Without Sacrificing Power
Oracle’s OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) is a major cost-saver for Red Bull Racing by allowing them to adjust their computing power to fit their exact needs at any given time. Instead of investing in large, costly physical servers that would only be used during peak times, OCI lets Red Bull scale up their computing resources right when they need it, such as during race weekends, and scale back down when those resources are no longer required.
For example, in preparation for a race, Red Bull might need to run billions of simulations to predict every possible race scenario and refine their strategy. With OCI, they can activate thousands of servers to run these simulations in parallel, gathering crucial insights for tire wear, fuel use, and competitor moves. This immense computational power is available instantly and only costs a fraction of what it would to run a permanent setup. As soon as the race ends, Red Bull can reduce their computing usage, cutting down costs immediately.
This flexibility also benefits other parts of their operation, like testing engine components and designing aerodynamics.
Ultimately, Oracle’s cloud setup allows Red Bull to pay only for the computing they use. This pay-as-you-go model lets them maintain high computing power and agility, while still managing costs efficiently.
Curious About How Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Could Transform Your Operations?
High performance, speed, security, and innovation—these are the shared qualities of an F1 car and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. As we’ve seen with Oracle Red Bull Racing, harnessing the growing amounts of data generated by any initiative is essential to delivering better services and driving innovation across organizations.
Having the ability to manage, store, and secure all this data, while controlling costs with the flexibility that cloud technology offers, is a clear advantage for any business today.
Sometimes managing complex multi-cloud environments can get messy without the right strategy or resources. But don’t worry—at Inclusion Cloud, we’re here to help you optimize your cloud infrastructure while saving costs to ease your IT budget. Book a call with us and let’s kickstart your digital transformation journey!
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