Red Bull Racing taps into faster speeds from AT&T

Racing team ramps up its partnership with AT&T to meet regulation changes in the 2014 F1 season

Red Bull Racing has gained a 2.5 times faster performance boost from AT&T’s network since last year.

The faster communication network comes the way of an expanded agreement between the F1 racing team and the telco, which began three years ago.

One year may seem like a short time for such a speed improvement, though Red Bull Racing technical partnerships head, Alan Peasland, said it was made possible the the size of AT&T's network.

“It has all to do with the scale of the partnership and what they are capable of providing,” he said.

The racing team increased the size of its partnership with AT&T this year, and Peasland said this came with an increase in bandwidth and access to products.

Red Bull Racing also has a bigger budget to work with this year than it did in the past.

Peasland said the changes were driven internally from the business, such as the introduction of 1.6 litre turbo-charged V6 hybrid engines to the 2014 Formula One season.

“The nature of the sport this year meant we needed a bigger network,” he said.

“Knowing we are going to put a heavier load on this year, and the extra data we’re going to create from the car, we had to increase the bandwidth to do that.”

The racing team worked with AT&T in the lead-up to the 2014 Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix to see if the required infrastructure is available to achieve that.

Peasland said Red Bull Racing will have the required bandwidth at every circuit for the whole season, as well at test events to fine tune the vehicles.

Bigger and better

As for what enabled this boost in capability, Peasland is unable to single out a single technology responsible for it.

“Our partnership with AT&T has always formed around the EVPN [Ethernet VPN], the global network that we use,” he said.

The EVPN has so far formed the main part of the relationship with AT&T, though Peasland said the expanded scope this year has opened up opportunities to use more of the telco’s services and products.

“The network is still the core of our partnership and what we talk about the most, but we now have access to a lot of the other products as well,” he said.

“We’re looking at some of their security tools, a side of the business we have traditionally not looked at in the past.”

Patrick Budmar covers consumer and enterprise technology breaking news for IDG Communications. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_budmar.

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.

Tags Networkingvpnat&tFormula 1Red Bull

More about AT&TAT&TIDGIDG CommunicationsIDG CommunicationsIDG Communications

Show Comments
[]