AUSTIN, Texas – High-speed broadband takes on a whole new meaning in the world of Formula 1 racing, where data delivered a second too late can mean the difference between life and death, or between winning and losing. When driver Sebastian Vettel experienced a collision during the first lap of a race in Brazil, the pit crew used real-time data to engineer a rapid recovery for his vehicle, helping him move on to the next round in the qualifying race.
The fastest Formula 1 pit stop ever was less than two seconds long and happened in Austin, home to the Circuit of the Americas race track. Circuit of the Americas, site of Formula 1 Grand Prix’s only U.S. race this year, is a 1,500-acre facility that boasts 94 miles of internal cabling, 22 miles of fiber optics and 30 terabytes of video storage.
AT&T is the fiber and Wi-Fi provider for Circuit of the Americas, and ExteNet is the neutral host DAS provider. The entire network was built in less than six months, and went live in 2012, the first year Circuit of the Americas hosted Formula 1 racing.
Corning was AT&T’s fiber supplier and CommScope supplied the cable. Cisco’s Nexus 7000 switches connect each building at 80 gigabits per second, with 10 Gbps connectivity back to each core switch with redundant customer premise equipment and power.
In addition to its work for Circuit of the Americas, AT&T has worked very closely with the Infiniti Red Bull Racing Team. AT&T provides the team with global Ethernet virtual private network fiber services for all races. Each car has an IP address and is continuously downloading data from multiple onboard sensors to pit crews and to support staff members who are not even at the race.
“The biggest challenge we faced, really was about communication,” said Infiniti Red Bull’s Alan Peasland. “Getting data from the car back to the factory to our headquarters in the U.K. … to support the teams that travel with the races. … They can have telepresence meetings so that they can have full live communications over that race weekend. AT&T is providing the communication backbone, the infrastructure that we use.”
The team is fully owned by Red Bull and employs 700 people, only 60 of whom travel to races. Peasland said data from the existing cars is a vital component to designing the next generation of Formula 1 race cars.
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