Getting to the starting line: Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team debuts its new car for a new F1 era with help from HPE

As a new era of completely overhauled Formula One cars hit the starting line, the smaller, lighter, machines with new aerodynamic features, fuel systems, and other enhancements are delivering greater driving agility. At the forefront of this F1 innovation is the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team, which leverages its partnership across all elements of design, development, and race-day operations in aim of achieving on-track success.

Naturally, getting in the winner’s circle starts long before race day. With the significant F1 rules changes for 2026, the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team has put HPE’s high-performance compute (HPC), and networking platforms to work supporting all phases of design, development, and race-day operations to amp up results in a sport where successes are measured in milliseconds.

GreenLake IT performance gains get the latest model on the grid faster

As building and refining F1 cars is tightly governed by FIA, or Federation International de l’Automobile, the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team must adhere to regulations regulating everything from engineering limits, like time permitted for wind tunnel simulations, to the IT infrastructure that underpins car building. This makes it imperative for the Team to balance all resource expenditures. In other words, every efficiency gained from optimizing technology, data handling, and analytics capabilities can be reinvested into engineering physical car components, drivers, engineers, strategists, and other operational needs, while staying within F1 budget caps.

By replacing its previous generation high-performance compute infrastructure with HPE’s GreenLake platform and HPE ProLiant AMD-based servers, enabled the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team to achieve a significant gain in the performance of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) workloads, which are the backbone of developing and refining F1 cars. In practice, this enables running CFD models more rapidly against various parts of the car, like the suspension components on the chassis, to determine which parts will increase race day performance.

Fast, secure network critical for engineering collaborations

To rapidly transmit all of this data throughout the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team factory, as well as communicate with its on-track crew, the team also adopted a comprehensive HPE Networking wired, wireless, and the setup includes optimization technologies to accelerate the performance of latency-sensitive and data-intensive applications.

Among other achievements, the HPE infrastructure deployment enabled reducing event simulations from three days to one, conferring Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team with a major advantage for design, development and race-day operations.

Billions of data points managed in real time aim to make car more performant

Trackside, Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team uses a high-performance HPE mobile data center, comprised of HPE servers and networking solutions, during testing, trials, and racing to collect, analyze, and transmit the data required for car enhancements and FIA reporting.

Whether during practice runs or on race day, it’s about finding the optimal balance between speed, downforce, and car components, which are informed by billions of data points the car’s sophisticated data-sensing devices generate. Given the volatile environmental conditions at F1 trackside, seconds count when transmitting data that keeps the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team ahead of the competition.

As the FIA restricts the amount of people permitted trackside, the HPE Aruba Networking solution is critical to quickly transmitting data back to the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team factory. This enables the team’s wider engineering and simulation specialists to run the real-time performance analytics that are crucial to making W17 (the newest car model), optimization decisions.

With HPE networking solutions transmitting real-time race data from any track in the world to engineers and simulators at the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team factory in Brackley, England, they can instantly run performance optimization models. By using advanced simulation software to process vast amounts of data, factory engineers and strategists can identify the most efficient track and weather condition configuration and transmit them to the W17’s crew at the race for rapid implementation.

Toward becoming the world’s most sustainable professional sports team

Another priority for both FIA and the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team is sustainability, as reflected by the 2026 fuel rules, requiring that Advanced Sustainable Fuels are used to decarbonize the transportation sector beyond just motorsports. In addition, a move to a 50/50 split between internal combustion and electric power means that the sport will become sustainable for the future.

Although such sustainability mandates are embedded throughout F1 regulations, and include IT technologies, the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team’s commitment goes beyond the mandates. It aims to become the world’s most sustainable professional sports team with a comprehensive Net Zero target throughout its supply chain by 2040.

Continuously shaving milliseconds wins F1 championships

Although races are won at the track, championships are won in the factory, which is why every F1 car undergoes continuous evolution. It's no different for advancing the W17, with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team aiming to shave one tenth of a second off of its race results at each event.

By using a combination of in-car, trackside, and factory analytics solutions, the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team can continuously reduce lap times by milliseconds. This includes sophisticated telemetry systems that collect real-time data from the car during practice sessions, qualifiers, and races. The car transmits data like tire pressure, engine temperature, fuel usage, and aerodynamics performance back to the team's base, where engineers and strategists analyze it to make adjustments and improve performance in real time on race day and before the next event.

Shared commitment to innovation and excellence gets the W17 on the leader board

As the W17 makes its debut for 2026 racing season, Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team and HPE will continue working together as one, putting our shared commitment to innovation and excellence to work winning races for the iconic motorsports team. We’re excited to continue on this exhilarating journey with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team as it continues to deliver the ultimate racing experience and make F1 history.