In a multibillion-dollar global sport like the Formula One (F1) the winner’s lead can be measured in milliseconds. So the smallest adjustment to the aerodynamic efficiency of a car can mean the difference between winning or finishing tenth. So the smallest adjustment to the aerodynamic efficiency of a car can mean the difference between winning or finishing tenth.

F1 is a data-driven sport, since teams rely on real-time information to make enhancements to cars and in-race strategies. For the Sauber Team this means gathering and analyzing data nearly around the clock, either from the cars as they race around the track or from wind tunnel testing and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations at the team’s headquarters in Hinwil, Switzerland.

The Sauber F1 Team leverages a FlexPod data center solution, jointly developed by Cisco and NetApp, and a NetApp MetroCluster solution for the reliability, simplicity, efficiency, and high availability required by the sport.

“Every single team in F1 pushes their cars to the absolute limit, which means the margin for success is razor thin,” said Monisha Kaltenborn, CEO and team principal, Sauber Motorsport AG. “Given the level of resources that other teams have to work with, we know we have to think and act differently if we want to challenge for the F1 world championship. A lot of people think speed and agility only apply to the cars on the track, but in our case it’s imperative for our IT infrastructure as well. NetApp gives us an IT foundation that can keep pace with the intense nature of our sport and help us accelerate innovation within our cars to make the Sauber F1 Team the best it can be.”

For every lap the car makes, 100 individual sensors on the car produce 20–30MB of data, of which 3-4MB are sent to the FlexPod platform in real time, including information about the tires, engine, temperature, and fuel usage that is then used by the pit team to make immediate decisions about in-race strategies.

The FlexPod platform’s small form factor allows it to travel around the world to every F1 race, giving the Sauber F1 Team a mobile data center that can reliably operate in extreme weather conditions. See pictures of the FlexPod platform in action at the track.

Wind tunnel testing produces 5200MB of data every day while CFD simulations yield more than 10TB of data per year. MetroCluster allows engineers to quickly access this data to make decisions about the car that shave off tenths of a second for the next race.

The FlexPod solution has allowed the Sauber F1 Team to reduce their physical footprint and power consumption at the track by 50%. The Sauber F1 Team’s corporate systems all run on a MetroCluster solution that supports 40 major business and technical applications that annually generate 20TB of new data and growing.