In a sport where championships can be won or lost by fractions of a second, the need for speed outranks everything.

Away from the track, all of today’s Formula 1 teams have extensive partnerships with top technology firms as they look to gain the extra advantage that could make the difference between glory and defeat.

TechRadar Pro headed to McLaren’s space-age Surrey headquarters to hear more on how one of the most famous teams in Formula 1 works with Dell Technologies in its push for victory. 

Located just outside the sleepy town of Woking, McLaren’s HQ wouldn’t look too out of place in a James Bond movie. The approach curves smoothly around a large lake which houses the water to cool the team’s multi-million pound wind tunnel, giving an all-round view of the streamlined building.

The reception is home to many of the team’s title-winning cars across its 52-year Formula 1 history, with a glittering trophy cabinet filled with reminders of the team’s victories acting as motivation to employees heading to the building’s cavernous cafeteria.

But the facility is also a buzzing hive of industry, home to engineers working 363 days a year in order to keep pace with the continually-evolving and improving sport.

With such a keen pace of innovation then, it’s vital that McLaren has a reliable and stable technology partner to handle the mountains of data it generates from testing on a daily basis.

“We’re very fortunate to have a great partnership with Dell,” Karen McElhatton, McLaren Group CIO told TechRadar Pro at a media event ahead of this weekend’s British Grand Prix.

“Dell has really helped us transform our business…on the IT side, underpinning all the data, all of the simulations and analytics that fuel our business is the power of Dell.”

With teams limited on the amount of processing power they case use in testing and development, the need for efficient yet powerful hardware is paramount – and the reason McLaren values its partnership with Dell so highly.

“This company is very quick – pace is in its DNA,” McElhatton says, “so from an IT provider in this environment, you need to be faster.”

“The faster we can design, the faster we can engineer, the more competitive we hope to be on the track.”

“Our racing heritage includes an absolute love for data – data drives everything that we do (and) Dell has been an amazing partner…we’ve been able to work with Dell to really improve some of the capabilities that we are delivering.”

Although no Dell Technologies staff are present at a racing weekend, the company’s technology is an integral part of every Grand Prix. McElhatton notes that working with Dell has allowed McLaren to bring hyperconverged infrastructure to every race, greatly simplifying the technical setup process when travelling to remote locations all around the world, noting that this means that IT, “doesn’t become a distraction, it becomes an enabler.”

Each car ultimately generates around 1TB of data over the course of a full race weekend, both via the myriad of sensors attached to the vehicle, but and also through HD video of the cars in action during practices sessions. Thanks to Dell’s hardware (including the newly released PowerMax servers) this video can be transmitted quickly back to the engineering teams at McLaren HQ for real-time analysis, allowing for quick decisions that could make all the difference during a race.

McElhatton highlights how important video data has become to Formula 1 teams in recent years, noting “video is growing ridiculously…we’re far more visual than we were five or ten years ago.”

McLaren’s relationship with Dell stretches across the entire McLaren Group, which alongside Formula 1 activity also includes the company’s road vehicle and Applied Technologies arms.

The latter looks to take learnings from Formula 1 to apply to other real-world situations, spreading the knowledge gained from the sport to slightly more pedestrian areas. McElhatton mentions utilising data to allow aircraft to move more smoothly, optimising logistics transportation and even healthcare recovery as varied examples of where McLaren’s knowledge has moved from the race track to the real world.

There has been much debate recently over whether Formula 1 has become too technical, if the drivers and races have become too robotic, but McElhatton disagrees.

“What Formula 1 wants to do is create an exciting race for the fans,” she says, “one of the best ways to innovate is when you’re under constraint…if you look at Formula 1 over the past years, that’s what has happened.”

Overall, although McLaren’s Formula 1 season may not be resulting in trophies just yet, the company is certainly one of the leading lights when it comes to technical development and innovation.

“Dell’s partnership with us is absolutely critical to our business,” McElhatton says, “Dell is helping us pick the right things – the smart choices to solve the problems we have.”

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With the rescue of the 12 boys and their football coach stuck in a cave in Thailand now reportedly underway, entrepreneur Elon Musk has been sharing his plans for helping the effort: apparently one of his companies, SpaceX, has been busy working on ideas for a “kid-size submarine” to get the boys out.

It would utilize parts used in the construction of the space firm’s Falcon rockets, Musk says. He’s promising that the sub would be “extremely robust” – small enough to get through the tight cave network, and light enough to be carried by two divers.

Earlier, Musk said the idea of creating an inflatable tube with airlocks was also being explored – but that is less likely to happen considering the twists and turns of the underground network that the boys are trapped in. Conversations with the teams in Thailand are ongoing, Musk says.

Rescue operation

“Continue to be amazed by the bravery, resilience and tenacity of the kids and diving team in Thailand,” Musk later tweeted. “Human character at its best.” Of course it’s not the first time that he’s offered help on Twitter, using the expertise of SpaceX and Tesla.

There’s been no word from the authorities in Thailand about whether they’ll take up Musk’s offer – no doubt a variety of options are being explored. Early on Sunday morning, there were reports that the rescue operation had begun, with the boys about to be led out of the cave network one by one.

That operation might have to be started and stopped several times as weather conditions change, but hopefully the SpaceX kid submarine won’t be needed to extract the 12 kids and their coach. If it eventually is, we know Elon Musk is standing by.

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If it weren’t for her smartwatch, 18-year-old Deanna Recktenwald might not be alive today. Her watch pinged to warn her that her resting heart rate was rocketing, and she immediately went to get checked out; if she hadn’t, she might have died from kidney failure.

Sarah-Jayne McIntosh had a similarly narrow escape. Her Fitbit warned her that her heart rate was three times normal; as she told The Mirror: “The doctors said that if I hadn’t phoned for an ambulance when I did, and if I wasn’t wearing my Fitbit to track my heart rate, I could have suffered a heart attack/cardiac arrest and could have died.”

Another Fitbit solved a medical mystery: a 42-year-old man was rushed to a New Jersey ER after a seizure, but couldn’t tell staff how long his heart had been racing. The doctors interrogated his Fitbit HR to determine when his heart rate had spiked, information that enabled them to decide whether it was safe to give him appropriate treatment.

William Monzidelis, 32, is certain that his watch saved his life. It urged him to seek immediate medical help; by the time he arrived at hospital 30 minutes later, he’d lost 80% of his blood. He’d suffered an erupted ulcer, and received life-saving surgery just in time.

A doctor on your wrist

We’re just scratching the surface of what wearable devices can do. For example, the Apple Watch is enabling large-scale research into heart conditions and can even detect diabetes – but in the longer term the Watch, and devices like it, will be capable of much more. Wearables will help to change the way we live, and the way we die.

One of the biggest causes of premature death is an unhealthy lifestyle – not just obvious things such as smoking or drinking, but poor diet and lack of exercise. Wearable devices can help nudge us towards improving those things, and in some cases there can be a financial reward: some insurers offer discounted premiums to customers who wear wearable devices on the grounds that they’re more likely to take positive steps to improve their health.

But wearables can do much more than track your steps or record the calories you’re consuming. Medical-grade health sensors are coming, and they can monitor all kinds of things. For example, Swiss firm Biovotion has a wearable that tracks heart rate, blood oxygen, skin temperature, sleep patterns and so on. 

At the University of Waterloo in Canada, researchers are working on diabetes monitors that don’t require the wearer to prick their finger several times a day. The device uses radar and artificial intelligence and is being developed by Google and the German hardware firm Infineon. According to project head, Professor George Shaker, “I’m hoping we’ll see a wearable device on the market within the next five years.”

Even beauty firms are getting in on the wearable act: L’Oreal recently launched a wearable UV sensor to help protect against skin cancer.

L’Oreal’s device shows what future wearables might be like. It doesn’t need a battery, it’s only 9mm long and it fits almost imperceptibly on your thumbnail. It then transmits to your phone via NFC – the same tech used in contactless payment systems – where its companion app analyses the data and tells you if it’s time to get out of the sun.

And such sensors aren’t just useful for sun worshippers. People with Lupus can only be in the sun for so long before their symptoms flare up. Some sensors, such as Shade, are so sensitive that they can even they can even detect the UV rays from light bulbs.

Always on

What’s really interesting about wearables is that they can deliver continuous tracking. That means we can get a much better picture of our health than we could ever get from a ‘body MOT’ at the gym or doctor. By tracking multiple bits of data about your body all day every day, you can see the big picture of your health – and your doctor can use that data to spot patterns that might otherwise be missed. 

When that data is combined with other people’s, it can save lives.

That’s what Apple’s ResearchKit is all about. It enables researchers to gather massive amounts of data (provided voluntarily) from people’s devices, and to use that data to gain insight into conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, autism, chronic heart conditions, skin cancer and epilepsy. And with that data, developers can create apps with CareKit to help people manage their conditions.

As Apple puts it: “Rather than relying solely on doctor visits, you’ll be able to regularly track your symptoms and medications, and even share the information with your care team for a bigger – and better – picture of your health.”

Lost and found

Wearables aren’t just about monitoring your vital signs. They can be of more practical use too. In Ireland, researchers have created a group called Carelink to create wearable technology for patients with dementia – something that affects more than 55,000 people in Ireland alone, with numbers rising every year. Patients with dementia can be prone to wandering, and Carelink is developing low-cost, energy-efficient sensors that connect to the cloud and enable wanderers to be located and helped.

Wearable technology can also be very useful for people with disabilities. The Wavio platform uses real-time sound recognition to create an electronic ear for deaf people, while South Korean startup Dot is developing smartwatches that communicate in braille.

Another big benefit to wearable technology is that it enables healthcare providers to monitor patients without requiring them to visit the doctor or stay in hospital. Miniaturization, and the relentless pace of technological advances, means that hardware you’d previously need to visit a hospital to be treated with can now be worn on your body and its data transmitted via an app. In the US, for example, Vitalconnect brings hospital monitoring of vital signs to a small sensor that transmits whenever it can get a mobile data signal.

It feels very much like we’re reaching a tipping point: ever-smaller, ever-smarter devices are making the previously impossible possible, enabling us to learn more about our bodies and how to look after them. Plenty of technologies promise to change your life, but wearables genuinely will.

TechRadar’s Next Up series is brought to you in association with Honor

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