By Michael Bettencourt

MONTREAL’S GRAND PRIX CIRCUS IS A SITE FOR SORE KEYBOARDS, IN CANADA AND AROUND THE WORLD

If you’ve ever been to the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, it’s easy to see why it’s often called the Formula One circus. It is a travelling road show filled with amazing technical displays, talented performers and, at almost every corner, death-defying stunts.

And that’s just at the street parties.

Sure, the actual race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve gets the lion’s share of the attention, as it should, since it features the most technologically advanced and expensive race machines in the world. But what is not readily apparent is that behind this year’s 92-minute race in Montreal, and every Formula One event, is the technological scramble that happens between the engineers, mechanics, team principals and even public relations professionals in the week or two between races. The overall goal is to move information around the planet as quickly as possible, with the hope that the quicker technical data can be obtained, transmitted and analyzed, the more time teams will have to gain speed in the straights, the corners, even in the pits.

“Today’s Formula One races are won at the factory as well as the track — in wind tunnels and computer simulations of wind tunnels,” said Tim Bush of Hewlett-Packard, the main sponsor and technical partner for the BMW WilliamsF1 team.

The engineering manager for HP’s High Performance Technical Computing division for Europe, the Middle East and Africa discussed the company’s role with Williams and BMW at a media briefing in Montreal before the race. “The time from design, to test, to production, to the race car is critical to race success.”

This is especially key for the current BMW WilliamsF1 partnership, since the 900-plus horsepower engines are designed and built by BMW in Munich, while the Williams team and its aerodynamic and chassis testing facilities are based in Grove, England.

The car is essentially put together at every race and new pieces are added at every event, even when running successive weekends, according to Bush.

“We’re averaging about 18 new pieces per car each race, versus six new pieces in 2003,” Bush said, and this is made possible by a two-hundred-fold increase in computing capacity. “The car is almost completely different in every single race.” To speed up the design and manufacturing of these pieces, the English and German labs continually exchange information, and during the racing season, a live feed of data is streamed to both facilities from places as far-flung as China, Australia, Brazil, Japan and Canada, as well as all over Europe.

TECH CENTRAL
To get the race running, the electricians and computer experts arrive at the track on the Wednesday prior to make sure everything is in place to run the various monitors, computers, power supplies and assorted high-tech gadgetry needed over the weekend, much of which is provided by HP. This includes an HP cluster platform 4000 supercomputer running Linux, Integrity system servers, 16 C8000 Unix workstations, flat-screen monitors, 26 notebook computers used by the team’s data acquisition people, about 100 radio headsets, as well as media facilities that allow digital photos, press releases and results to be transmitted worldwide as quickly as possible.

“We’re putting tools in the hands of the engineers of the car to do things as quickly and efficiently as possible,” Bush said.

The mechanics who set up the garage follow the electricians, then the engineers, then the media and corporate relations types, team directors, and lastly the drivers. The drivers are the celebrities of the team, and their steps are often slowed by a swarm of video cameras, photographers, journalists and PR people.

Combined, the BMW Williams team carries 31 tonnes worth of supplies to each circuit, including six engines, three or four chassis, and 170 non-rubbered wheels, since team partner Michelin brings its own transporters full of tires.

“It’s the team that adapts best and quickest that will succeed at the end of the year,” said Andre Collis, Hewlett-Packard’s director of global sponsorships.

However, 2005 hasn’t been a great year for the Williams F1 team or HP, from both a sporting and a business perspective. There was the Indianapolis fiasco where Williams and most other teams pulled out before the race, HP’s laying off of nearly 10 per cent of its global workforce, a string of uncharacteristically poor race and qualifying results, plus the mid-season announcement that BMW bought the Sauber F1 team so that it could run independently of Williams on the F1 stage for 2006.

The restructuring at HP may also impact its Formula One efforts, since published estimates of HP’s spending indicate it’s the most costly sponsorship on the F1 circuit today. None of the major sponsors reveal exact dollar figures for their F1 activities, but series insiders estimate HP provides approximately US$100 million to US$120 million. Collis wouldn’t confirm the figure, but said the deal is a mix of cash, equipment and human resources.

But Collis also noted that exposure to 150 million viewers around the world is coverage no other international sporting endeavour can provide. “Unlike the Olympics or the World Cup, the F1 series provides exposure every year,” he said. He calculates there is more than US$12 billion in sales represented by over 1,000 customers HP has hosted at various events over a typical season.

Neither the exposure nor the need for technical speed has been lost on the other big F1 teams. The BAR Honda team introduced the use of Voice over IP to the Formula 1 circuit in Montreal, in a deal with global business communications firm and sponsor Avaya. The move allowed BAR Honda to encrypt and secure its wireless phone conversations over the team’s high-speed network, plus offered a 30 per cent reduction in long-distance bills. That is key, said BAR’s sporting director and 2003 Indy 500 winner Gil de Ferran, when a typical race weekend involves more than 1,000 calls all around the world.

“A converged communication network with instant access to the right information wherever we are gives the team a competitive advantage on the track,” said the 37-year-old Brazilian, who also won two championships this year with Honda driving on the CART circuit that features stops in Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton.

“It’s the same on the track as off the track — anything that makes us faster and more efficient gives us an edge over our rivals.”

The BAR team’s aerodynamic and chassis facilities are also in England, like most of the big teams, while the engine comes from Honda in Japan. So saving 30 per cent off a hefty long-distance bill means money that can be poured into development in other areas.

BAR team members use laptops that feature Avaya softphones, software that allows the computers to act as telephones. This means engineers and technicians can call the factory or any technical partner from every Grand Prix race around the world as soon as critical data from the vehicle appears in real time on their monitor, all without the need for handsets.

WIMAX SPECTACLE
Spectators at the Canadian Grand Prix also got a brief taste of some impressive high technology this year. Intel, in partnership with Canadian-based wireless solutions provider Redline Communications, lit up the Ile Notre Dame circuit with a WiMAX signal that promised the public a taste of the next generation of high-speed Internet access. Since most people didn’t bring their laptops to the track, Intel set up mobile “racingdesigned” notebook displays where people could surf the Web, check e-mail or even send digital photos of themselves superimposed between Panasonic Toyota team drivers Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli.

Both Intel and Redline are keen to push their WiMAX technologies, which they said will hit the Canadian market in the last quarter of 2005. WiMAX, short for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is a standards-based wireless technology that provides high-speed connections over long distances. While the more established Wi-Fi (802.11a, band g) covers local areas such as homes, offices or individual hotspots, WiMAX (IEEE 802.16-2004) covers wider metropolitan or rural areas to eight kilometres per base station in crowded areas. It extends to 50km with a clear ‘line of sight’ typically found in rural areas.

For urban users, the main benefit is that data transfer speeds are up to seven times faster than Wi-Fi technology. Also, cottage country may soon come out from under the broadband blackout, as WiMAX towers are set up. Plus these superpower hotspots are much less expensive to set up than underground cable connections which are physically attached to each property.

“We are highlighting how WiMAX-based products are enabling access to the Internet from greater distances by showcasing mobile demonstrations with laptop PCs in golf carts driving around the Grand Prix campus,” said Nancy Demerling, director of marketing at Intel of Canada.

“The Formula One race is a great venue for demonstrating the value proposition of WiMAX-based technology,” said Keith Doucet, vice-president of marketing and product management at Redline Communications. “Redline’s RedMAX solution will soon be generally available to bring the WiMAX advantage to consumers and small businesses alike.”

And perhaps it will provide the street parties lining downtown Montreal with more technological feats, and their own futuristic version of the Formula One circus.