A look inside F1's AI revolution, and the humans keeping it all in check

At the beginning of the British Formula One Grand Prix weekend, which took place over the July 4 weekend, Aston Martin held its first Technology Forum at its state-of-the-art Technology Campus situated outside the Silverstone circuit in the UK.

During a day of tours, interviews, and roundtable discussions, I learned that AI is almost everywhere in F1, how F1 fans at home can spot it in action, and also why it won’t replace actual human engineers any time soon.

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By  Andy Boxall

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Bringing the right partners onboard

The Aston Martin Technology Forum gave the teams’ key tech partners the chance to speak about how they contribute to the sport, and unsurprisingly, data and AI were major parts of the conversation.

Data storage company NetApp’s Tara Mulcahy revealed:

With Aston Martin, [we process] about 50 petabytes of data on race day.

Enterprise AI company Cohere’s Ryan Lewis said:

There is so much data packed away in F1 teams, sometimes it’s hard to access it and to make sense of it, which is a really exciting opportunity for AI.

Cloud computing company ServiceNow’s Simon Cox added:

I like to say the data shows the map, and the AI shows the trajectory.

Can’t outsource experience

The people matter

The forum discussions were focused on the technical aspects, as you’d expect, and any F1 fan listening in may have feared the sport is heading towards an AI-and-data-first future.

Aston Martin’s Technology Ambassador, Eric Ernst, was on hand to put those concerns to rest. He said:

We can outsource intelligence, but we can’t outsource experience. The experience is still with the team, the people.

See the people and technology at work

From the machines to the tools

Touring the Aston Martin Technology Campus showed Ernst was correct.

In one of the glass-enclosed offices, a huge technical drafting board dominated one corner. Beside the board was Aston Martin’s Team Principal and Managing Technology Partner Adrian Newey.

It’s well known he prefers to use the drawing board and notebooks, rather than a computer.

During the July 3 Sprint Race qualifying session, I sat in the viewing area for Aston Martin’s Mission Control, an aptly named room filled with computers and monitors, each operated by a person in constant contact with the rest of the team.

What was interesting was that instead of using AI to transcribe and summarize radio messages broadcast from other teams, which Aston Martin uses to craft strategy, a team of volunteers listened in, processed what was important, and passed the information to the right people.

Even the wheel gun the pit crew uses during a pit stop to change a wheel on the car has processor architecture built by ARM — the same company making the chip architecture in your phone — and machine learning capabilities.

However, it’s people who wield it, and their skill and teamwork, who get the time it takes to change four wheels and tires on an F1 car down to less than two seconds in training conditions.

Where can fans see AI in F1?

Strategic decisions

The technology and AI at Aston Martin, and almost certainly every other F1 team, are crucial to success, but those are at work behind the scenes.

Can an F1 fan watch a race and actually see AI in action?

I asked Aston Martin’s Chief Information Officer, Fabrizio Pilotti, during a roundtable discussion where we should look, and his answer was fascinating.

[What Formula One shows] on TV is maybe 0.5% of what the reality is, but one thing that gets more and more exposure today is the race strategy. They talk a lot about it during the TV broadcast, they show some data, and they talk about safety car windows, and if there is a race with rain.

An advanced fan starts to perceive how teams approach the strategy. Lewis Hamilton winning in Barcelona [on June 14, 2026]? That was an AI strategy.

Pilotti explained that F1 fans seeing unusual strategies in play by teams may be witnessing AI at work.

He didn’t know what went on at the Ferrari pit wall in Spain, but by reverse-engineering the strategy, it appeared AI was responsible.

[The Ferrari strategy in Barcelona] looked unfavorable, and nobody thought about it. And then [Hamilton] went on to win, and by a margin. It was not in the normal computation of how you calculate a strategy.

Pilotti went on to say the AI used in race strategy is trained on strategies used in the past, with scenarios going back as far as the late 1970s, and especially the ones which resulted in a win from an unusual situation.

However, as we’ve seen everywhere else at Aston Martin, the final strategy calls are made by people.

Pilotti chuckled when he reminded us why this is important:

Can you pick a strategy that is very unusual? Yes, and it may help you. Obviously, we remember the strategies that work, but I also remember lots of them that didn’t!

The parallels between using AI to create a race-winning (or race-losing) strategy and blindly accepting what Gemini tells us after asking it a question are obvious. AI’s work always needs to be checked.

F1, technology, and AI

The forefront of motorsport

From the dual-clutch transmissions first seen in F1 cars, which we now have in cars in our driveways, to the way data is collected, interpreted, and used, Formula One has always been a technical sport, and its innovations have often found their way into the real world.

While the Aston Martin Technology Forum emphasized how AI has made a huge impact on F1, and will continue to do so, it was heartening to see people are still, if you’ll forgive the pun, the driving force behind it.

Eric Ernst summed it up perfectly, saying:

While technology provides immense capabilities, the ultimate performance differentiator lies with the people operating the machines. The drivers, engineers, and the pit crew.

The British Grand Prix took place on July 5 and was won by Charles Leclerc for Ferrari. The next F1 race will be held at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium, on July 19.