That’s where the small things start to add up. “If a network in total is faster, more reliable, more secure and creating those incremental gains from multiple aspects of an organization, then in theory, you start to see the whole organization lift,” says Patel. And that’s—whether you’re an F1 racecar or a business owner—why milliseconds matter.
“There's this huge explosion in things being connected, whether we like it or not,” says Patel. “How we go about building the environments, the technologies, and the solutions that enable that connectivity to happen at scale is hugely important. We're helping our customers really rethink what that connectivity strategy will look like going forward.”
We’re in a world where the experience we have with technology increasingly matters, from keeping the lives of racecar drivers on a track safe to allowing us to share what we want, when we want with friends, family, and colleagues. “If something doesn't work once or twice, we switch it off, we move to another provider, we all go shop somewhere else,” says Patel. “That digital experience fundamentally matters.” And that's where the technology Cisco provides makes sense for high-demand clients like McLaren Racing. “At Cisco, we're looking beyond the network. We're looking all the way up the stack to the application and everything in between.”
Network monitoring is essential in ensuring that decisions on the track can be made as quickly as necessary, but having a dynamic network infrastructure to begin with is paramount. That’s why the team uses Cisco Wi-Fi 6E. If Wi-Fi 6 is analogous to adding more lanes to a highway, then Wi-Fi 6E is like adding more highways. “It's a complex world down in the paddock, and they need all the bandwidth they can get to facilitate faster connections, more efficient speeds, and channels that aren't as congested,” says Neumann. “Wi-Fi 6E has made that possible.”
When all of these tools come together in one technology stack on a race weekend, it shows. “We've got to make sure that we are collecting and analyzing all that data to make decisions,” Green says. “We've got between 90 minutes and two hours to execute that on track on a Sunday and it's a pretty public performance, so you can be judged on how well you are doing in making those decisions. Thankfully, Cisco has been an awesome partner—pushing us and helping us think differently.”
The demands of the McLaren F1 Team are a bit unusual when compared to the average company, which requires a technology stack that is fast, efficient, reliable, secure, and—perhaps most importantly—extremely powerful. Whether at home in Surrey, England, or racing in Austin, the team has to be connected. When you factor in over 20 races per season, that is a lot of building and striking of networks. “No matter where we go, we are deploying this mobile data center that keeps us connected, and that mobile data center collects all the telemetry coming from the cars,” explains Green. “The two cars produce about a terabyte and a half of information from Friday through to Sunday. And whilst we're capturing all that information on the track, we're also relaying all of that data back to the McLaren Technology Centre. That's not too difficult when you're racing in Silverstone, but when you're racing in Monaco or Miami, your network has to be incredibly fast and completely reliable.”
Those words ring especially true when decisions have to be made on the racetrack. Take, for example, trying to optimize a pit stop when the safety car comes onto the track. At that moment, a team has the opportunity to come in for a pit stop and get back out on the track without losing position. But if the safety car comes out and a car is going around the last corner, the opportunity is lost. It’s at this moment where every millisecond counts—because a team only has about three seconds in total to execute the decision for a pit stop. That’s when the team relies on live telemetry that feeds data points from the car, the driver, and the other cars' positions on the track. In those precious seconds, the network feeds thousands of data points and simulations to optimize the decision—and minimize the shortcomings of human decision-making. And, maybe even more critically, it’s capable of doing that reliably thanks to tools like ThousandEyes, which analyzes the performance of networks in real time. “Think of it like an x-ray for the network,” says Rob Neumann, Global Partnerships Head of Technology at Cisco. “It gives McLaren visibility into not only their own network and what's happening, but it predicts and allows them to get ahead of any issues that might occur, while extending visibility into networks that they don't own, but critically rely on for their mission.”
It’s a new-age twist on the old adage that says, “Little by little, you go far.” And in the particular case of Cisco’s technological gains, it’s not only helped partners go far, but also go fast. Like, really fast. And there’s no better example of that than the company’s partnership with McLaren Racing.
In Formula 1 races, cars are often reaching speeds of 220 miles per hour. And inside those cars, racecar drivers are processing information at speeds of up to 268 mph. That’s a combined speed of 488 mph happening behind the wheel, in a setting where split-second decisions are being made constantly. It’s data that can’t wait a tenth of a second—or a thousandth of a second, for that matter.
be argued, rules our lives. Think about how many alarms you’ve set, calendar events you’ve scheduled, birthdays you’ve celebrated. We model our lives around minutes and hours, months and years. But, as it turns out, humans are not reliable preceptors of time.
Research shows that two visual stimuli inside a person’s field of view can be regarded as simultaneous—although they happen up to five milliseconds apart. Some neuroscientists have explained the lag as the brain being forced to wait for the slowest information to arrive—often about a tenth of a second—to get the timing of events correct. That means that the human brain’s awareness, and our cognitive interpretation of events, is retroactive.
A tenth of a second may not seem like much. But in a world where, biologically speaking, operating as close to the present as possible serves as a distinct survival advantage, it matters.
And in a digitized world where stock markets, public infrastructure, vehicles, and entire industries are computerized, the demands are even higher. There, milliseconds matter. “If milliseconds matter, you're talking about fractional incremental gains,” says Chintan Patel, CTO, Cisco UK & Ireland. “But if I fractionally become better every single day or I fractionally improve, you can start to see a marked increase, right?”
Time, it can
A tenth of a second may not seem like much. But in a digitized world where stock markets, public infrastructure, vehicles, and entire industries are computerized, the demands
are high. Here, milliseconds matter.
A Boundary-Pushing Partnership
Whether you’re a racing fan or not, chances are that you know automobiles aren’t what they used to be. The racecars of today are computerized super machines that require an IT team just as much as a pit crew. Ed Green, Head of Commercial Technology at McLaren Racing, has built his entire career around the technological needs not only of the cars and drivers, but also the design teams, the mission control team at the McLaren Technology Centre, and the fans. It’s his job to identify and utilize the best technology stacks in existence and help apply them to the requirements of McLaren. “We look at the needs we've got as a racing team: Where do we need to be connected? How do we need to better collaborate?” he says. “We're looking at all sorts of general needs as a racing team. We're quite small in terms of employee numbers, but we are quite complex in terms of what we do. We've got computer fluid dynamics, we've got mobile data centers, we have connectivity at the edge—meaning that we are still connected to even the thing that is furthest away from our network, like a racecar. We really need to make sure we are utilizing the best technology.”
“WE LOOK AT THE NEEDS WE’VE GOT AS A RACING TEAM. WE’VE GOT COMPUTER FLUID DYNAMICS, WE’VE GOT MOBILE DATA CENTERS, WE HAVE CONNECTIVITY AT THE EDGE. WE REALLY NEED TO MAKE SURE WE ARE UTILIZING THE BEST TECHNOLOGY.”
- ED GREEN, HEAD OF COMMERCIAL TECHNOLOGY AT McLAREN RACING
By Numbers
HOVER TO REVEAL
When COVID-19 hit, it required teams and companies across the world to think differently. The pandemic was a pivotal moment of digital transformation for every organization, small and large. For McLaren Racing, that meant engaging fans with new content with live streams and virtual meet and greets with their favorite drivers. Also, the team continued to explore bringing design team collaboration from across the world to work on 3D models of car components with Cisco’s Webex Hologram tool (“That blew me away,” says Green).
“We're living to see both the upward trajectory of what technology can do and the impact it will have on organizations both public and private,” says Patel. But—especially during the past three years—that growth translated into a supercharged environment of connectivity that has only accelerated. There are statistics that estimate that by 2030 there will be over 50 billion things connected to the global internet. That’s counting everything from cell phones, smart doorbells, dog collars and saunas to—you guessed it—racecars.
Keep Moving Forward
Race Day
We’re in a world where the experience we have with technology increasingly matters, from keeping the lives of racecar drivers on a track safe to allowing us to share what we want, when we want with friends, family,
and colleagues.
This story was produced by WIRED Brand Lab for Cisco.
Think Fast
CLICK TO REVEAL
1 milliseconds
= the flash of a camera
1 second
= the Earth travels 18.5 miles through space
1 minute
= you breathe
12-20 times
300 milliseconds
= the blink of an eye
300 milliseconds
12 milliseconds
150,000
250 Million
1,000 People
81,000 Miles
The latency of the team’s Cisco network connection back to the McLaren Technology Centre from
the Netherlands Grand Prix, 260
miles away—a fraction of the 300-millisecond average.
Every F1 car is made up of 150,000 components, all of which are monitored by a network of sensors and connected computers.
Data points are collected per car
per race.
Employed at McLaren Racing,
who need to stay connected via
Webex by Cisco.
The distance the McLaren F1 Team will travel during a 23-race F1 season—and the same Cisco network will keep the team connected all season.
Simulations shared over Cisco’s network, helping to model the potential Grand Prix outcomes,
which are run in advance of the race to support quicker decision-making.
1 SAFETY CAR
20 RACECARS
3 SECONDS TO
MAKE CRITICAL
DECISIONS
250 MILLION DATA POINTS BEING RECORDED FROM THE McLAREN CAR
LESS THAN 3 SECONDS FOR A PIT STOP
1-3 PIT STOP PER RACE
2.6 SECONDS AVERAGE BETWEEN FIRST AND LAST PLACE IN QUALIFYING
1 minute
= you breathe
12-20 times
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