How Infiniti Red Bull Racing is using smartphones to drive race-day efficiency and collaboration

Red Bull Racing tightens communications between race-track and HQ, enabling the use of thermal-imaging cameras on race days

Formula One team Infiniti Red Bull Racing says that the use of smartphones, combined with the deployment of AT&T unified communications (UC) tools, has enabled it to improve team collaboration - both at the race circuit and at the team's headquarters in Milton Keynes.

This project is just the latest in a long-established partnership between the four-time FIA Formula One World Championship winning team and the communications giant AT&T, says ‎Al Peasland, head of technical partnerships at Infiniti Red Bull Racing.

During F1 race weekends, Red Bull's operations room in Milton Keynes can conduct live telepresence meetings with the engineers at the track, but now the team want to go even further. "One of the things we want to do is to have video conferencing at the desk or in all of our meeting rooms over smart whiteboards, rather than having telepresence devices in dedicated rooms," Peasland says.

Red Bull is also in the process of rolling out instant messaging software on PCs and smartphones throughout its 700-strong team.

According to Peasland, the IT department is "already getting great feedback from people like our chief engineers who are at the race track, using their own smart devices and being able to connect to our own private network."

He adds: "It's helping to move the business forwards and helping to bring more collaboration to the team."

The aim of the project is about "really being able to get business systems onto our mobile devices" as Red Bull Racing sends some 60 race engineers to races in 19 different countries every season. "When you think about those 60 people travelling around the world, they're travelling away from home a huge amount of time during the year," says Peasland.

"Being able to remain connected, not only when they're at the race track by plugging their laptop into the network, but when they're on their smartphone at the airport, the hotel or in transit, that's a lot of extra time that we can use them and they can be productive," he continues. "It's definitely transformed the business and it's why we're putting a lot of effort into that project right now."

The mobile devices are managed with an AT&T mobile device management (MDM) tool, and that combination of agility and security has enabled Red Bull Racing to innovate in new ways, such as enabling engineers to transfer crucial information directly back to the factory using just their smartphones.

"One of the things our chief engineer is able to do is take his smartphone to the racetrack on a Friday and photograph parts of the car," explains Peasland.

"He's already on the business network, he's already got our business systems on the phone, so he can then mark-up the image and send it directly to whoever needs to see it in the factory for their analysis," he says.

"What it's also doing is helping to provide a new platform we can innovate on top of," continues Peasland, who described how Red Bull Racing is trialling the use of forward-looking infra-red (FLIR) thermal imaging software on smartphones.

[Please turn to page two for more on how Red Bull Racing uses FLIR thermal imaging to improve race performance]

How Infiniti Red Bull Racing is using smartphones to drive race-day efficiency and collaboration

Red Bull Racing tightens communications between race-track and HQ, enabling the use of thermal-imaging cameras on race days

"They're able to convert your mobile device into a thermal-imaging camera and also provide thermal devices which we can put onto our system. That then gives us the ability to give us new information that we didn't have before straight onto our network without having to go through several devices," he says.

Those "several devices" that are now surplus to requirements include a camera, a laptop, an image editing tool and email, now that thermal images can be sent straight for analysis from a smartphone.

That enables Infiniti Red Bull Racing to more quickly analyse and manage the thermal data the car generates, especially in key areas including tyres, brakes, the engine and the exhaust. If any of those parts overheat it could cause a race-ending failure, so it is crucial that data is analysed as quickly as possible.

Therefore, harnessing the power of mobile to quickly transfer and analyse thermal imaging data is allowing Red Bull Racing "to understand what's happening with the car in ways we wouldn't be able to see before", Peasland concludes.