In a sport the place success may be received or misplaced by fractions of a second, making certain your know-how stack is as efficient as it may be is important for each Formula 1 crew.
With budgets being constantly scrutinized and new laws coming in for the 2026 Formula 1 season, every crew wants to make sure its workforce is as environment friendly and productive as doable.
Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 (AMF1) just lately introduced it could be renewing its partnership with ServiceNow, and TechRadar Pro was invited to the crew’s Silverstone HQ to search out out extra.
“Redefining the core”
ServiceNow is many issues to many shoppers, however for a company as large and assorted as AMF1, the corporate has performed a key position within the crew’s continued digital transformation – though AMF1 could not essentially use that time period.
“I’m not a big fan of the word digital transformation – as for me, that suggests that it’s done,” Sioned Edwards, IT Operations Director at Aston Martin F1, tells us, “to me, digital transformation is incremental change and delivering technology into an organization, so trying to say it’s done is never going to fly – and it’s never going to be done here!”
“We’re always on this endless cycle of trying to improve technology, implementing technology, trying new things – so we’re constantly digitally transforming.”
“In many cases, digital transformation misses one of the biggest points – it’s the byproduct of organizational change – we talk about business transformation, AI transformation,” says ServiceNow chief innovation officer, Paul Hardy.
“Digital transformation done right is amazing…it’s redefining the core of what you do, redefining why you do it – and what impact does this have on your business – but it can’t be done well without business transformation or organizational change.”
Hardy provides that AMF1 is enterprise what he calls, “a real digital transformation journey…and it’s not something you do in 12 months – it takes time – but that’s what we’ve done (for customers) for the last 20 years!”
“Part of implementing ServiceNow is ensuring value now, value today, and value tomorrow,” he notes, “we know the use cases, so we can walk in and say, you might be a Formula 1 team, but I guarantee you’re going to be doing onboarding moves, ads changes, offboarding…and guess who else has that same challenge? Banks, healthcare services, and others – so we’re not just building a product for it, we’re building the narrative.”
Edwards notes that Formula 1 is such an ever-changing panorama, IT has to play an important position, however there’s a transience to this. In 18 months’ time, a crew’s set-up might be completely totally different to what it has now, so having a dependable associate with ServiceNow has been essential.
“The way we’ve approached the ServiceNow implementation is to keep it incremental, keep having small wins and small pockets of work to echo what we try and do with the organization on performance gains,” she says, noting that AMF1 itself as an entity was solely shaped in 2021, as the following technology of the previous Racing Point crew, which means a robust basis was wanted when it got here to IT – which is the place ServiceNow got here in.
“It’s delivering value, rather than one big band solution – as sometimes when you do big projects, certainly from an IT perspective, the value gets lost – with an incremental change, it’s easy for people (in the team) to get on board with.”
“The ServiceNow implementation offered us the opportunity to do it right the first time…it was literally a blank sheet of paper!”
This makes it very like a Formula 1 automotive itself, because the automobile which takes to the grid within the final race of season will probably be utterly totally different to that which began within the first race, such is the fast tempo of growth within the sport.
Edwards notes that when the messaging was tweaked to enchantment to bosses who’re making an attempt to win Formula 1 races, the benefits of working with a associate like ServiceNow had been apparent.
Even cybersecurity may be tied to stopping the automotive taking to the observe, she notes, so linking it again to the crew’s core values of being right here to win, and to race, is important.
“It’s really important to not only have the best technology, but also the most reliable technology,” Edwards provides, “you need a laptop to start the car, and if that laptop doesn’t work, the car doesn’t start!”
Looking ahead
New laws are coming into drive in Formula 1 in 2026, with new challenges dealing with your complete crew, so I ask Edwards if this has affected her priorities in any manner.
“A cost cap in any other words is just a budget – just with some very interesting exclusions and rules,” she notes, “any leader in IT has to make decisions…how much performance is it going to add to the car, and how big a risk are we mitigating?”
“We operate with quite a high risk appetite, but there are some areas where we’re not willing to accept risk.”
“There’s a lot of work being pushed into the IT department, driven from the business and the organization – new tooling, new software, new hardware,” she notes, highlighting ever-changing new cybersecurity threats as one other key consideration.
“So we have to look at deadlines – the first test is never going to change, so we have to make a priority call – there’s lots of long hours, lots of people that we’ve got to move around…so it’s a whole piece of not only technology work, but also logistical work.”
I ask Hardy if there have been any particular current buyer use instances which helped ServiceNow adapt to the fast-paced world of Formula 1.
“Every millisecond counts, and you get the feeling when you work with the team that they’ve just got a passion for success – and I think we work with a lot of companies where people want to change things for good – and the energy you get for something that’s so fast-paced is electric.”
“It’s unanimous across all industries – every industry is having to reduce risk, every industry is having to cut costs, be more efficient, and wants their people to be more productive…and we’re in a good place to position ourselves to answer to that.”
“What customers say to us is that we’re moving at such a pace, the expectation from businesses is growing like never before – and yet we absolutely know this is the slowest we’re ever going to move – and the future is tomorrow, it’s not five years away any more.”
“We want the world to work – there’s a lot of things happening, and if we can change it a little bit, if we can add a little bit to that, we’re not just doing good for our customers, we’re doing better for humanity too.”