On many weekends during the year, auto sports fans from around the world tune in to watch Formula One, the highest class of international racing for single seat cars.

It is high entertainment on a global stage, yet many of the millions who follow Formula One may not be aware they are witnessing what may be the most technologically dependent competition on the planet.

“The car that qualifies first at the beginning of the year, if you didn’t touch it, would be last by the end of a year, that’s the pace of development of a Formula One car,” said Zak Brown (pictured), chief executive officer of McLaren Racing Ltd., a British motor racing team. “We change and develop a new part on the car every 14 minutes, 365 days a year. Technology plays a huge role, it’s probably the most technically evolved sport in the world.”

Brown spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the Splunk .conf21 Virtual event. They discussed the role of data in McLaren’s success and how Splunk provides the insights in a sport where the margin of victory can be fractions of a second. (* Disclosure below.)

Following data analysts

McLaren Racing has amassed 183 victories and is the second most successful Formula One team in the history of the sport, according to Brown. The team’s success in recent years has been based on the tremendous amount of data – one and a half terabytes every race weekend – that it collects.

It is information fed to a group of data analysts who sometimes find themselves at odds with Brown himself. Data usually wins.

“They’re staring at data. I’m not,” Brown said. “I’m trusting my 30 years of experience. They beat me nine out of 10 times.”

Splunk Inc. has teamed with McLaren Racing since the beginning of the 2020 Formula One season. Splunk’s data-driven insights and machine learning capabilities help McLaren process a mountain of information in a sport where winning or losing can ride on a fraction of a second.

“Everything we do is precision. Every second, every tenth counts,” Brown said. “You have all of these different scenarios playing out with weather, tire wear, competition. You can get all of this data in, but what do you do with it? Humans can’t react as quickly as Splunk, who can help us collect and understand data.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of during the Splunk .conf21 Virtual event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Splunk’s .conf21 Virtual conference. Neither Splunk Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE