New TV graphics for Formula 1 have been revealed for 2019, following the sport deciding to move most of its infrastructure to outside premises with Amazon Web Services.
Formula 1 wishes to develop more effective data tracking systems, as well as digital broadcasts and race strategies, doing so by making use of a number of services which are offered by AWS.
The long-term plan is to provide viewers with information which they hope will “change the way fans and teams enjoy, experience and participate in racing.”
One of the services used to achieve this goal will be SageMaker: it has allowed the sport’s data scientists to analyse over sixty-five years of race data from the past, which can then be used to collate statistics and give insight into decisions which have been made by teams and drivers.
Ross Brawn, who is the Technical Director for F1, said: “For next season we are expanding the ‘F1 Insights’ for our viewers, by further integrating the telemetry data, such as the car position, the tyre condition, even the weather, so we can use ‘SageMaker’ to predict car performance, pit stops and race strategy.”
He added: “There will be some exciting new AI integrations into next year’s F1 TV broadcast.”
One of the other graphics which will be introduced next year focuses on ‘car performance’.
Brawn said: “We know that somebody is in trouble: his rear tyres are overheating. We can look at the history of the tyres and how they have worked and where he is in the race, and machine learning can help us apply a proper analysis of the situation.”
‘Overtake probability’ will also be added. In relation to this, he said: “Wheel-to-wheel racing is the essence, a critical aspect of the sport, and now with machine learning and using live data and historical data, we can make predictions about what is going to happen.”
Brawn added that what makes this interesting is that the viewer will have access to all this information, but the teams will not.
“The graphic on the right shows what we expect is going to happen in this event. What is great about this, is the team’s don’t have all this data. We as F1 know the data from both cars and we can make this comparison which has never been done before.”
Lastly, he revealed a graphic which gives insight into pit stop strategy.
“Stopping at the right time and fitting the right tyre can win or lose a race. We are going to take all the data and give the fans an insight into why they stopped and when they stopped – did the team and driver make the right call?”
