How investing in technology got Williams back on the right track

From finding ways to save Sainsbury’s millions in its stores to providing kit for the latest James Bond film, innovations and IT advances by the Formula One team’s engineers are paying dividends on and off the circuit

Felipe Massa of Brazil and Williams makes a pit stop during the Australian Formula One Grand Prix at Albert Park (Getty Images)

From super-yachts to supermodels, the life of a Formula One driver is perhaps one of the most glamorous jobs – if you can call it that – in sport.

But away from the razzmatazz and exotic locations, the engineering and technology experts behind the racing wizardry at Williams’ HQ in the slightly less glamorous Oxfordshire countryside are quietly weaving their magic ahead of the start of the new season.

They hope to make the smallest of improvements that could mean the difference between winning and losing.

The pursuit of those fine margins saw South African Graeme Hackland parachuted in from Lotus in 2013 to help with Williams’ turnaround.

He is the group’s IT director, who explains the task that faced him when he joined.

“Bigger teams were outspending us three to one. So we had to be much smarter and find partners that will help us achieve our ambitions,” he says from a boardroom called Monza, named after the famous Italian Grand Prix.

“We started to look at what will make the car quicker and how we could get from the ninth place that Williams were in 2013 to the front of the podium.”

Technology was at the fore of the shake-up. Mr Hackland teamed up with the US IT consultancy Avanade, which helped Williams swap the old pen and paper method for mobile apps.

Avanade’s job is to help to improve efficiency, close the gap on the competition and build on last year’s third place finish in the Constructors’ Championship. It helps to analyse data in real-time during the race rather than retrospectively.

The team was criticised in 2014 for its conservative pit stop strategies, but Mr Hackland says it was not able to be more aggressive because engineers could not access the data needed to make bold calls – something it has now changed with a new tyre optimisation app from Avanade.

“There was data the car was generating that they [engineers] couldn’t get to in real-time. So they’d look after the race at the tyres and say, ‘maybe we should have made a different decision’,” Mr Hackland recalls.

It also struck a deal with BT for a high-speed internet link which means data can be analysed at the Oxfordshire factory even if the race is happening as far afield as Brazil or Singapore, which of course saves the cost of flying people around the world.

Another benefit is that Williams’ chief technical officer Pat Symonds can work from home.

“Some race weekends when Pat’s not at the track, he’s standing in his kitchen, accessing the data, talking on the intercom to someone on the pit wall and working as if he were at the track.”

Most of Mr Hackland’s digital transformation is about efficiency, but one of the things he shored up when he arrived was data security, knowing that any hack or leak to a rival Formula One team could end the season.

He confesses: “There was a perception that things were secure when actually I don’t think they were. So I really focused on IT risk, protecting Williams’ data and protecting our customers’ data.”

Of course, poaching top driver Felipe Massa from Ferrari and signing up rising star Valtteri Bottas the year before helped Williams move up the starting grid, but Mr Hackland believes that the new tech has helped shave seconds off lap times.

The group is also growing its Williams Advanced Engineering business (WAE), the other string to its bow.

The factory is home to the kind of hi-tech gear that former Williams champion Alain Prost, known as “The Professor” for his intellectual approach to racing, would have loved to get his hands on.

Some of the more eye-catching kit lying about includes parts of the custom-built Jaguar C-X75 hybrid supercar, which features as the baddie’s ride in the high-speed chase in the latest James Bond film Spectre.

Other projects in the division include building the electric batteries used to power Formula E cars and solar energy storage technology.

The group has also developed aerofoil technology that it reckons will save supermarkets millions by helping them keep cool air in their giant fridges rather than wasting the energy and freezing shoppers in the process.

Sainsbury’s, which it is estimated uses 1 per cent of the UK’s total energy, with two-thirds of that from refrigeration, has been testing the technology as part of its drive to reduce carbon emissions by 30 per cent by 2020.

By developing WAE, the team has become more profitable off the track. The funds are being reinvested in the F1 team, which is thus more successful on the track and can attract wealthier sponsors.

Its latest set of financial results show the plan is working. WAE lifted underlying earnings to £1m in the six months to June 2015 on revenues of £10.9m, while the F1 division trimmed losses to £2.5m, with revenues growing to £51.8m.

There are 62 days to go until the first race in Melbourne, a huge day in the calendar for the 550-strong team in the F1 business that will ultimately define whether the hard graft put in over the winter months has paid off.

“We’ll know in Australia, if our cars fly past then [the changes we’ve made] have made a contribution,” Mr Hackland says.

Jacques Villeneuve’s triumph in 1997 was the last time Williams won the Drivers’ Championship, so the team is eager to end the drought.

It is unlikely to be this year, but there are high hopes that with a little help from technology Williams can return to the top of the podium in 2017.