21 races across the world; 7,500 unique components in a car; 30,000 design modifications in the course of a season. Formula One is full of staggering numbers and daunting logistical challenges. Underpinning those challenges is vast amounts of mission-critical data. Gathering it, analysing it, and putting it to work to make the cars faster is an ever-evolving challenge for our engineers and IT team. So, Aston Martin Red Bull Racing works with class-leading Innovation Partners like Citrix to ensure their engineers have the best tools for the job.
Long before the cars head to the circuit, Citrix Workspace enables our designers in the factory to get off on the right foot with component design. Traditionally, design engineers would run 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) models on high powered workstations at their desks. Now some of our key engineers are running these workloads through XenServer in our datacentre, with data and applications accessed via Citrix Workspace. Using Citrix Workspace allows these engineers to share compute resource and allows us to use a much cheaper thin-client at desk to act as a receiver.
Citrix Workspace users running 3D vGPU-based workloads such as CAD are seeing real improvements in graphics quality with recent upgrades, higher FPS and smoother user experience in general. — Neil Bailey, Head of IT Infrastructure, Architecture & Innovation
But it’s not just the designers that deliver performance for the car. Teams across Aston Martin Red Bull Racing have to work together to develop, manufacture, and build race winning cars. The factory actually has 8 buildings and a variety of R&D and manufacturing teams and facilities, including test rigs, a driver simulator, wind tunnel, machine shop, and composites department. Engineers throughout the factory and trackside need access to the latest CAD and essential applications to help them work, and Citrix Workspace enables multiple users to share workstations on different shifts or projects.
Active Workspace allows us to streamline the user interface, configuring it specifically to individual roles and providing users with aggregated data from across multiple systems. This speeds up the process of parts development collaboration. — Dan Watkins, Head of CAD PLM
Once the parts are ready to race, it’s time to focus on the race weekend. Citrix Workspace helps our trackside performance and design engineers to remotely access 3-D applications and data hosted at the Team’s headquarters in Milton Keynes, from wherever they are in the world. This enables them to make decisions about the set-up of the car, using data held back at the factory, whilst being part of the action trackside. Not only can our engineers access the CAD models they need, but using Citrix frees them up to use lighter, lower cost laptops and reduces the risks of them carrying sensitive IP on their laptops.
But it’s not just our team that travel who benefit from access virtualised data. Back at the factory, during a race weekend, specialist engineers from various areas of the business need to be able to view and analyse real-time telemetry from the 100+ sensors fitted to the car. This data gives our engineers insight into everything from oil pressure in the engine and gearbox, to brake temperature and suspension travel. For some groups of engineers, running analysis on big data sets during testing on track, it can be more efficient to do this analysis using an on-site workstation, accessed via Citrix from the factory. This reduces the need to send large files back to the factory during the on-track session, and keeps the network availability up for more time-critical live streamed data.
So, from initial design to optimising car set-up at the track, Citrix Workspace is important to ensuring our engineers can access the right data wherever they are working. As an organisation, Aston Martin Red Bull Racing is known for its creativity, speed, and innovation. Through our use of Citrix, our team is increasingly agile and can work anywhere, putting mission-critical data at our fingertips whilst also keeping it secure in our data centres.
Zoe Chilton — Head of Technical Partnerships
Zoe leads a team managing key relationships with Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s technical and innovation partners, based at the team’s headquarters in Milton Keynes, UK. The diverse portfolio of 14 Partnerships spans a wide range of technical capabilities and products — from some of the World’s biggest names in telecoms and IT, to leading experts in manufacturing and product development.
Zoe joined Aston Martin Red Bull Racing in 2015, coming from 5 years industry experience in motorsport and high-performance engineering in the UK’s Motorsport Valley. Initially joining the Team as a Senior Partnership Manager, Zoe’s role is to liaise directly with the team’s key technical partners, and also engineering stakeholders within the business, to ensure innovation partnerships deliver the maximum value to both parties.
