Hitching a ride on the F1 brandwagon

It was a chance meeting on the Formula 1 race track, and it sealed an important business deal.

Nick Fry, Mercedes CEO, who was associated with Formula 1 for more than 10 years, got chatting with Mehul Kapadia, Managing Director, F1 Business, Tata Communications, on the massive amounts of data generated at each race.

Each Formula 1 race weekend creates anywhere between 50 GB and 70 GB of data. Handling that amount of data constantly during the race season, and being able to share rich data, and report issues back from the trackside to the factory in real time was a herculean task. Or so Fry thought.

Kapadia assured him that his company could take on the huge logistical challenge. Though the Tatas had signed a deal to become F1’s official connectivity provider in February 2012, the company was ready to prove itself all over again, with a team member.

Formula One is a high-pressure sport, captivating 600 million viewers around the globe. There is more to it than glamour, champagne and speed, though. It is also a data-intensive sport, with 22 drivers from 11 teams competing at 19 circuits. A simple issue like a lap time by a driver in the third place could be crucial to the outcome of the race.

And that is where Tata Communications, which powers around 20 per cent of the global Internet, decided to make its brand heard. Not just in connecting the high octane motor sport to millions of fans across the globe, but also in providing constant feeds to the people who run the show.

Mercedes AMG Petronas has its headquarters at Brackley in Northamptonshire, England, which is a stone’s throw from Silverstone, home to the Formula 1 British Grand Prix. With staffers to ensure the team’s two cars, driven by Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, are ready for the races and move ahead of the competition, high speed data connectivity was also paramount.

During the chance meeting with the then CEO Nick Fry, Mehul Kapadia brought home the fact that Tata Communications could help the Formula One team, Mercedes AMG Petronas, could draw data three times faster from its cars racing around the world to its UK headquarters. The company’s global subsea fibre ring has over 500,000 km of subsea cable and over 200,000 km of terrestrial network fibre, allowing a data transfer capacity of one terabit per second. Given the severe restrictions on the number of people in the pit, F1 teams cannot engage often with their technical people.

“F1 is a demanding sport. It requires fast and secure connectivity and reliable Web hosting, as even a split second of downtime can have a significant impact. We decided to build on the strength and capability of the multi-year technology service and marketing agreement we had earlier signed with the Formula 1 management. As we build more connectivity into more racetracks and more service layers at various points, we found an opportunity to sign a deal with the Mercedes team. Though it brings its own sets of challenges, we were eager to take on the role,” said Kapadia.

“There are cost restrictions involved too. By upscaling the connectivity by three times, more people in the UK factory at Brackley can get real time access to data getting generated. The larger team at the factory gives the strategic calls,'' said Kapadia.

F1 cars have some 150 sensors on them and generate around 1,000 data points in real time. “In less than a quarter of a second, we bring the information from the pit or the track to the technical staff at the factory. They can then tell the driver how he can improve his performance by driving in a certain way,” added Kapadia.

In allowing the team to tweak the car's performance on race day, the Indian company provides a competitive edge in car performance.

Brand-strong

Teaming up with the sport has also presented a massive branding opportunity for Tata Communications.

The Formula One World Championship runs from March to November spanning 19 races in 19 countries across five continents. While the provision of technology powering the huge volume of data at Grand Prix races acts as the ultimate showcase of Tata Communications’ capabilities, the multi-year deal with Formula One was followed up by an agreement with the F1 team, Mercedes AMG Petronas. Both the deals have brought about a growing awareness of the Indian brand in the global market.

“Our brand appears on the Formula One Website, which gets up to 7 million hits per race during peak weekends. We are also present on the merchandise, like t-shirts of the Formula One crew, which is around 180 engineers and technical staff at every race. Moreover, the technical centre, which is the heartbeat of the race, is branded with our logo,” said Kapadia.

He added that the particular relationship “is a live testimonial of the work done by Tata Communications. It showcases our expertise. The partnership serves as a high-profile user case of our products and services.”

The F1 management had another unsurmountable task. Consumer demand for quality and live content across different platforms is now the norm. The emergence of bandwidth-heavy Ultra HD, quick turnarounds and availability of content across multiple platforms was a major speed breaker, since the management was eager to link all involved – fans, broadcasters and the sport’s management team – to the data emanating from the racetrack, and to deliver the live race experience around the world.

Each F1 race now uses the Tata service, whose portfolio of media services and fibre network helps media companies streamline their content, without large investments in hardware.

Refusing to get into the monetary details, Kapadia explained: “Any general sponsorship would be in the form of putting a badge on a product, track or a car. What you very seldom get into, which is unique about our relationship with Formula One, is actually being able to explain what we do as a business. It is a real-life case study, where we can talk about what our brand can do for our customers. For us, a big part of this partnership is getting the market to know what we do and how we can do it for current and future prospects.”

Why team up with Mercedes? “That is the team which is on the move. They are ambitious, always wanting to do more. By giving them three times connectivity, we want them to do more,'' said Kapadia.

Is there a grey area in the ethics of working for both the F1 management and an F1 team? “To sell our products even more within the F1 ecosystem would help us showcase our capabilities to global enterprises. We are open to delivering the same cutting edge innovation to yet another F1 team,” said Kapadia, dismissing the doubts. He added that in the telecom category, “it is common to service multiple people who compete with each other, as long as secure and reliable services are provided to each customer.”

Next Gen

Formula One is notorious for its rapid development cycles. For the Indian company, the just concluded Singapore Grand Prix was an opportunity to test its next generation capabilities. A demonstration on a practice day during the Singapore Grand Prix had the company using a JPEG 2000 compression to deliver live video as well as multiple programme feeds over fibre, from the race circuit to F1 headquarters in the UK.

“A race track involves three different entities,” maintained Kapadia. “There is the F1 management, who have to run the operations. There are 11 teams. There are the group of broadcasters who take video content and deliver it to fans globally. As we entered the world of F1, we realised we could add value to all these three segments,” he said.

For the bunch of broadcasters, the Singapore event turned out to be “proof of concept, where we showcased how we take content and deliver it across different screens. It is also a revenue opportunity. The Singapore video segment was more of an innovation, since it was a feed quality better than HD, and gives a glimpse into the potential future of sports broadcasting,” said Kapadia.

Being able to tap into the world's only fibre optic global ring of cables opens the door to endless possibilities in sports video distribution. Using fibre, broadcasters have the opportunity to manage content in ways not possible via satellite, which gives them more options in what video feeds they share with the viewer for consumption.

Sebastian Vettel is not the only one racing in the current F1 season. Tata Communications continues to showcase new and expanded video transport and services capabilities, and multi screen delivery management services, so that fans across the world can catch the action on their laptop, or television or even mobile.