CASE STUDY | AUTOMOTIVE

Versa Redefines McLarens
F1 Speed Strategy
INDUSTRY
Automotive

McLaren Racing Limited is a British Formula One (F1) team,and a wholly owned subsidiary of the McLaren Group, a British
conglomerate based in Woking, Surrey, United Kingdom. They are

HEADQUARTERS

the second most successful team in Formula One history afterSurrey, United Kingdom

Ferrari, having won 182 races, 12 Drivers’ Championships, and eight
Constructors’ Championships.

REVENUES
GB£ 871.27 million

Challenges
Two-time F1 world champion Fernando Alonso (currently racing for MclarenEMPLOYEES

F1) spoke during a keynote speech at Mobile World Congress in February
2018, about the growing importance of data analytics for both machine and3,178

driver performance: “Each car provides more data every single second than
you can imagine. Every single movement we do in the car, every steering
wheel input, every throttle input, every brake pressure input is transmitted
immediately in real time to the engineers in the garage,” he said.

“Because SD-WAN offers
us more control overdata flows during crucialmoments, it gives us

Racing data acquisition is the recording of parameters that allow an engineering
team to later analyse the behaviour of the entire car or specific data points likeengine RPM, fuel temperature, pressure, wheel speed, damper displacement,
suspension load, etc. Each F1 car has around 1.25 kilometres of wiring andapproximately 200 sensors, some of which generate data readings of up

an edge. I also think it

to 1,000 times per second. A single race-car can generate around 1.5 billion

proves the willingness ofsamples of data every race, consuming more than 100 gigabytes of storage.

our Technology Partners

This steady and massive flow of data is crucial for the McLaren engineering

to deliver, to bring theirteam to gain insights into the performance of both car and driver during aexpertise to the party, withrace. Real-time access to this data enables the engineering team to makethe ultimate goal of driving

critical changes or on-the-fly adjustments that can improve the performancethe team faster.”of both the driver and the car on the race track.

-Zak Brown,
Executive Director ofMcLaren Technology GroupOne of the challenges that McLaren was facing came to light when an R&D
engineer from the McLaren team attending a pre-season practice in Barcelona
in 2017, noticed occasional video jitter on the screens in the garage. Theengineering team found that the issue was that the media rich data wasflowing through a congested and low-capacity MPLS.
The McLaren team realized that the telemetry data, and IP-based real-timecamera feed from the car and the racing track was being routed throughthe same MPLS circuit. This resulted in the IP camera feeds quality being
negatively impacted due to the congestion causing jitter.

CASE STUDY | AUTOMOTIVE

Another challenge that the McLaren teamwanted to tackle was the fact that the 20
Formula One races are held at various racing
circuits across the globe. The McLarenengineering team needs to rapidly set up
the on-track network infrastructure typicallyon Monday and Tuesday before each race
weekend, and quickly dismantle the entire
set-up post-race to transfer the equipment
to the next race location as quickly as
possible, well ahead of the next competition.

The McLaren Technology team was looking
for a solution that will help improve theiraccess to real-time sensor data withreliability and stability. The speed at thewhich the copious amount of data (asignificant portion of which is media-richdata like video) needed to be transferredin real-time seemed like a daunting task forlegacy WAN technologies. This was evenmore challenging because the data needed
to be transmitted to McLaren’s Technology
Centre in the United Kingdom from F1
circuits located across the globe.

The Solution
The McLaren engineering team had three critical challenges that they needed to address:• Ensure maximum and intelligent utilization of available bandwidth at any moment in time with automated intelligent
dynamic traffic steering and prioritization of traffic• Provision on-demand bandwidth for the high-speed transmitting of media-rich telemetry data, cost-effectively.
• Deploy a network in as little time as possible at different locations before each race.
McLaren partnered with NTT Communications, a subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Corporation,
the largest telecommunications company in Japan and worldwide, to provide network and SD-WAN services to
McLaren for reliable high-speed data transfer. NTT’s SD-WAN offering is powered by Versa Networks, an SD-WANleader whose Cloud IP Platform delivers integrated networking, security, automation and analytics for a secure
software-defined edge infrastructure.
Leveraging NTT’s reliable and vast global connectivity with Versa’s Secure SD-WAN, McLaren completed a successful
test deployment during the 2017 Japan Grand Prix. McLaren was able to send 100GB of data without any jitter or delayduring the race from the race-pit in Japan to the company’s technology centre in the UK.
The successful test deployment convinced McLaren that the benefits and the value-add of SD-WAN will enable theiredge infrastructure to be more agile and give them an edge over their competition.

CASE STUDY | AUTOMOTIVE

NTT and Versa together provide McLaren withreliability, security, stability and flexible managementof their data traffic flows. McLaren now leverages
direct internet access as an additional path alongwith a primary MPLS circuit – turning each racepit into a Hybrid-WAN connected edge. Directinternet access allows flexibility to accommodate
for any sudden spikes in bandwidth demand during
a race. SD-WAN enables prioritized and dynamic
traffic steering of mission-critical race data, such astelemetry and video, by recognizing the underlying
network performance and application experience,
ensuring the traffic is always steered through the best
possible path.
The solution optimizes the use multiple transports(internet, MPLS, wireless) to direct and prioritize
traffic based on pre-set parameters like time,
data-priority, application, application and network experience. Additionally, McLaren can see network and bandwidthavailability and capacity need quickly to immediately optimize data transmission during a race, giving them an edge toadjust and deploy changes in real-time.

The Benefits11.8 Billion

0% Downtime

Centralized Control

data points prioritized perand deployment facilitate faster andracing season

simplified setting up of network systems
at individual locations before every race

With Versa’s SD-WAN, McLaren benefits from a software-defined platform which enables the engineering teams
to quickly set up the network infrastructure before every race. Single touch deployment and centralized control
and provisioning of network services like secure track to HQ connecitivty, application traffic policies, unified threat
management (UTM) and web proxy, makes it easier and quicker for them to set up secure optimized network
connectivity in preparation of race weekend.
McLaren plans to roll out SD-WAN for all its 2018 races. Formula One just got a little
more interesting.

Versa Networks, Inc, 6001 America Center Dr, 4th floor, Suite 400, San Jose, CA 95002 | Tel: +1 408.385.7660 | Email: info@versa-networks.com | www.versa-networks.com© 2018 Versa Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Portions of Versa products are protected under Versa patents, as well as patents pending. Versa Networks and FlexVNF aretrademarks or registered trademarks of Versa Networks, Inc. All other trademarks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners. Part# CS_AUTO-001.0