Formula 1 has long been at the forefront of technology development – staying on top of the mountains of data the cars produce each race weekend isn’t just a useful tool, it’s the heart of the team.
That means a team’s technical partnerships are paramount to its success, and Aston Martin’s official AI compute platform partner, Arm, is no exception.
Arm claims to be the industry’s, ‘most power-efficient and highest-performing compute platform with unmatched scalability,’ and I spoke to John Kourentis, Arm’s Director of Automotive Go-To-Market in EMEAI, to find out more about their involvement.
Turning data into downforce
Data is everything in Formula One, with the margins of just a few seconds deciding the difference between first and last place.
Changing the front wing by a few millimetres can make or break a team’s race, and preparation is key to understanding how the car will perform on any given weekend.
“The trajectory for Aston Martin looks really strong and so from that kind of ambition, we can be ambitious in terms of where the technology path leads to as well. So it really kind of maps to well to, I think, a partner that really wants to kind of invest in driving performance through electronic investment and electronic innovations” Kourentis tells TechRadar Pro.
Crucial to the car development is the use of a new, state-of-the-art CoreWeave wind tunnel, and whilst drivers and strategists are away on race weekends pushing the car to its limits, engineers back in the team’s Silverstone base are collecting as much aerodynamic information as they can in the limited wind tunnel time they are allowed;
“The detail and the technology that they deploy to understand the aerodynamics of the vehicle inside the wind tunnel is mind blowing” Kourentis explains; “they need the best sensor data capture technology that they can possibly get.”
That’s where Arm comes in. Aston Martin uses miniature sensors in the body of the car, and these sensors deliver real time information back to engineers, where Arm-powered compute is used to filter and process the signals in real-time.
In this wind tunnel, there’s a scaled down model of the car, around 40% of the car’s actual size.
This model is packed with over a thousand sensors, and the engineers and aerodynamicists then rotate the car’s position and analyze the wind flow and aerodynamics of the car, adding and modifying car parts to see how these changes affect the air flow.
“All of that requires a really, really comprehensive suite of sensor data technology. That’s where this aspect of the partnership is really focused, in making sure that we’ve got the best sensor data technology they can possibly get, getting the right fidelity of data that they can then actually use for aerodynamic optimizations in the future,” Kourentis says.
Optimized for success
Wind tunnels haven’t always been a feature of Formula One. As the sport has evolved, the margins have only gotten smaller, and aerodynamics in particular has taken centre stage as one of the sport’s most important elements, despite what Enzo Ferrari might have thought.
In the early days of the competition, aerodynamic testing was primarily done on-track, with engineers relying on race-weekends to collect data. This meant their data was at the mercy of track, weather, and driving conditions – and produced a desperate need for a more controlled environment.
Now, regulations and budget caps are the factors that influence data collection – it’s only in the last few months Aston Martin has had its own facility;
“Before having their own wind tunnel, they were sharing a wind tunnel with Mercedes,” Kourentis points out.
“And what that meant was that it was never really set up and always optimized for their use. I’m not sure there’s much love shared between the various different F1 teams. So the first major benefit is they have their own wind tunnel facility, is that it’s always set up and optimised exactly how they want it to be.”
Unfortunately, just because Aston Martin has its own wind tunnel, that doesn’t mean it can use the tech whenever it wants.
Formula 1’s governing body, the FIA, has a strict limit on the amount of time each team can spend using the tunnel, so as Kourentis says, “that means that every minute, every second of analysis that they do in the wind tunnel really, really does count.”
“That was part of the considerations in terms of some of the sensor technology and the arm-based microcontrollers that are deployed in that model, is they need to get really, really high fidelity data in actually quite a short space of time because they don’t have the luxury of being able to run it 24/7.”
Removing friction
On a more technical level, Arm is focused not just on delivering large volumes of high-quality data, but also on making this process as seamless as possible.
In a sport as precise as F1, any delay or barrier to information can be extremely costly, Kourentis notes;
“So a lot of the work we do is around removing friction from the software ecosystem to allow them to officially deploy their software on ARM architecture. And that’s a lot of the work that we’ve been doing with the Aston Martin team.”
Arm is able to do this by keeping things consistent, allowing the team to utilize the best sensor technology and microcrontroller technology, and pair them with the most efficient software components, whether these are real-time operating systems, middleware, or other applications.
Arm works with software partners to make sure all designs are optimized for the underlying technology;
“One of the beauties of ARM and one of the reasons why we’ve had the success that we have is that we have managed to keep a consistent architecture for all of our CPU designs, our GPU designs and our ISP designs, which means it delivers a very, very consistent way to land software on those CPUs and families of CPUs,” Kourentis argues.
“To consistently do that over decades and decades and keep that entire ecosystem covering along with the latest and greatest architecture that we change is the real skill of ARM, to be honest with you.”
All change for 2026
Most Formula 1 fans will be looking to Aston Martin with anticipation, especially as the upcoming 2026 regulation changes come in, potentially bringing a shake-up of the grid.
The regulations represent a serious opportunity for the team, whose performance recently could perhaps be described as underwhelming, given previous glimpses of success.
“[New regulations will be] Engine heavy for sure. More of a hybrid focus, more electrical energy coming in in 2026. There are some considerable regulation changes around aero as well,” Kourentis confirms.
Aston Martin recently signed aerodynamicist and legend of the sport, Adrian Newey, an engineer who has designed a staggering 12 constructor’s championship-winning cars, in a bid to boost its fortunes, and although the new regulations are said to bring a focus on engine power, aerodynamics will undoubtedly be of huge importance, Kourentis notes;
“I’m not an aerodynamic expert by any means, but understanding how the car performs with aerodynamic changes when it’s cornering along different types of corners, in different circuits, different conditions, different speeds.”
“You could see that having a really, really strong sense of data platform in the wind tunnel to be able to capture those new aspects of how the regulations evolve is super important. And that’s where most of the time [will be spent]. Adrian and the team are really focused on next year’s car right now.”
Aston Martin fans will no doubt be eagerly awaiting the new season, where they’ll be benefiting not just from the wealth of Newey’s expertise, but also from the use of its very own wind tunnel, and the hoards of valuable data they can collect.
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