From Tapes to Terabytes — Formula 1’s Electronic Revolution

Formula 1 is a sport which has long prided itself on innovation. In many ways, teams pushing the boundaries and making use of new, cutting-edge technology in an attempt to gain an advantage over their rivals has actually become an integral part of the sport over the years.

One of the products of this relentless technological march has been the increasing prevalence of electronics and computers in Formula 1. Today’s F1 cars feature onboard computing power that would easily put the computer that landed man on the moon to shame.

The pit wall, garages and factories are also computerised to a staggering extent, with cars designed using cutting-edge computational fluid dynamics and constantly monitored via advanced telemetry packages. The combined data output of this myriad of systems can easily reach the 10 terabyte mark for a single race weekend. Perhaps unsurprisingly in light of this fact, the dependence on electronics in modern F1 is such that a systems failure can render a team totally unable to compete.

The road which led us to this hyper-refined, data-driven version of Formula 1 has been a long one, however. As you might expect for a category of motorsport which had its genesis in the 1950s, F1’s early years were often remarkably rudimentary compared to the sport we know today.

Indeed, during the sport’s first decades, the cars themselves differed little from the earliest automobiles mechanically. Electrical devices on these early F1 cars typically went little further than the spark plugs, and while some mechanical instrumentation did exist to help guide drivers and engineers, it was far from the norm and usually looked at with suspicion.

The trusty stopwatch, a keen ear for problems when the car passed the pits, and the customary post-race tête-à-tête with the driver were therefore the only real tools engineers had at their disposal to understand what their cars were doing during a race.

This situation gradually began to change in the 1970s as Formula 1 started to become more refined and professionalised. This new decade saw aerodynamics becoming more understood, sponsorship growing year over year, and teams’ budgets increasing as a result.

With this increase in money and expertise, there also came a willingness to explore new technologies to discover how they might be of use in Formula 1. Naturally, the world of electronics — itself undergoing a revolution which would gather pace into the 1980s — was one of the first places many in F1 turned to.

Early interest in electronics and computerisation in Formula 1 manifested itself in numerous ways, some of which proved rather fanciful. For example, the 1971 French Grand Prix at the newly-built Paul Ricard circuit featured an elaborate automated electronic race control system to start the race, as well as illuminated panels in place of traditional flag marshals to signal to the drivers.

At the time, such a system was the height of sophistication, with the considerable cost of the setup being footed by Marlboro. The fact that both electronic marshalling and race control are commonplace in F1 today, after years of refinement, aptly demonstrates the forward thinking behind the system.

In 1971, though, the technology these systems depended on was far from mature, and this gave rise to the possibility of issues. This was quickly proven when the much-vaunted start system failed during an F3 support race, with the embarrassment being compounded when the light panels neglected to warn drivers of an oil spill on track during the grand prix itself. A solution in search of a problem, perhaps.

In light of such missteps, it seems unsurprising that some people were initially strongly critical of the encroachment of electronic “gizmos” into the largely mechanical world of Formula 1. Nevertheless, some electronic devices proved too useful to ignore, and instruments for gathering data that could help guide drivers and engineers when it came to car setup and design proved to be one such technology.

To begin with, it was actually the US that took the lead in this field, ahead of even Formula 1. As early as 1975, Johnny Rutherford’s McLaren M16E IndyCar sported a fully fledged car-to-pit telemetry system supplied by Data General, which could monitor 14 of the car’s key parameters and transmit data back to the pit wall via radio each lap.

With American firms having this early lead when it came to motorsport data logging, it is perhaps unsurprising that it was Formula 1’s US-based tyre companies who were instrumental in popularising the discipline of electronic data logging in F1.

Particularly prolific in this area was Dr Karl Kempf of Goodyear. Kempf was not the first to attempt to bring a data-driven approach to motorsport, with the aforementioned McLaren system in IndyCar predating his program, and cars as far back as the pre-war “Silver Arrows” of Mercedes and Auto Union featuring rudimentary mechanical data logging systems. However, Kempf’s effort was the first large-scale data gathering programme in Formula 1, and the first to be conducted in the public eye. As a result, he has gone down in history as the father of F1 data science.

Kempf’s F1 data logging program began in the mid-1970s, under strict orders from Goodyear’s bosses to “bring some science to grand prix racing”. With the gift of hindsight, it seems that the program may have been spurred on by rumours of Michelin joining the sport and disrupting the monopoly on F1 tyres which Goodyear had held since arch-rival Firestone departed the sport at the end of 1974.

Whatever the reason for the programme’s genesis, Kempf and his team designed a mysterious “black box” data recorder for the job. This package contained instruments for monitoring a variety of different parameters of an F1 car, ranging from suspension movement to steering input, a computer for interpreting these signals, and the necessary shielding to withstand the physical forces and electrical noise generated by a mid 1970s F1 car.

The readings from the instruments were recorded onto a standard audio cassette tape, which could be analysed with computers back in the pits to help teams fine-tune car setup and guide future tyre developments from Goodyear themselves. While not a telemetry system in the strictest sense of the word — as it did not send the data over the air — it was nevertheless a technical triumph and among the first truly effective data gathering systems in F1.

Goodyear offered the data logging system to all of their customer teams, which in the mid 1970s consisted of essentially every team in F1, thanks to their soon-to-be-disrupted monopoly. The main interest however, came from Tyrrell, who were fielding their famed P34 six-wheeled Formula 1 car at the time.

As Tyrrell saw it, Kempf’s equipment would provide a unique opportunity to understand the dynamics of their unconventional car, and would hopefully allow them to unlock the potential which the team’s chief designer Derek Gardener believed the concept had.

Tyrrell’s bullishness about the data logging system was immediately apparent, as in late 1976, the team publicly announced that for the following season, they would set up a dedicated full-on research and development group within the Tyrrell team itself. This R&D team would have its own dedicated P34 chassis at its disposal, which would be permanently equipped with Kempf’s data logger, and would test whenever the team’s drivers were not racing.

By the time this announcement was made, Tyrrell had just completed their first season using the P34 chassis. That first campaign had brought a mixture of excitement and frustration. The car had been extremely quick on occasion, but performance was patchy and setting the car up proved tricky. It is therefore easy to understand why Derek Gardener and the whole Tyrrell team found the prospect of getting hard data on the car rather than having to rely solely on driver feedback so enticing.

Unfortunately for Tyrrell, despite the promise of 1976, and all of the know-how that Kempf’s data-logging system provided, 1977 proved a far more frustrating season than the last.

While Kempf’s system did indeed give the team insight into the car’s performance as hoped, it proved unable to guide the team in making the car quick on anything approaching a consistent basis. In actuality, the team slid backwards considerably as Goodyear shifted development focus away from the small custom front tyres used by the P34 in favour of their conventional rubber. With the looming threat of Michelin on the horizon, Goodyear just could not justify expending valuable resources on a single team.

As a result, setting the car up became, if anything, even more difficult than it had been in 1976, with consistent understeer arising from the mismatch between the older-spec front tyres and the new compounds of conventional tyres used at the rear. Rather than helping Tyrrell to maximise the potential of the P34, Kempf’s data logger had merely given the team objective data on the car’s deficiencies and proven that the concept was a dead-end. Before the year was out, the car’s mastermind Derek Gardener duly left the team.

Despite these early hiccoughs, Tyrrell opted to persevere with the data logging system, and if anything doubled down on their commitment to the programme. Indeed, Karl Kempf actually left Goodyear before the 1978 season and went to work for Tyrrell full-time as their research director under new chief designer Maurice Philippe.

Philippe penned a rather more conventional car than the P34 as his first design at Tyrrell. While initially intended to carry a downforce-generating fan, this could not be made to work, leaving Philippe with a sleek but unassuming four-wheeled design called the 008. This car would nevertheless continue to be equipped with Kempf’s data logger, which would be used in pre-season testing and in practice sessions at every race of the season to help dial in set-up and guide development. The “black box” package had also been redesigned substantially and slimmed down from its 1977 weight of around 10kg to just 3kg.

Unlike with the P34, Kempf’s data logger immediately proved its worth in 1978. The new 008 car completed an extensive pre-season testing programme at the Paul Ricard circuit before its first competitive outing, and at least initially struggled with oversteer, which badly impacted its lap times. Thanks in large part to data from Kempf’s system, however, the car’s problems were traced to the front suspension, and Philippe duly designed a new package to hopefully rectify these issues in the period between the test and the first race of the season in Argentina.

Initially, the cars were again wracked by problems on the first day of practice in Buenos Aires, recording times some 4 seconds off those set by the lead cars. However, once again, the data from Kempf’s system (which was fitted to the car of team leader Patrick Depailler) came to the rescue, as after careful analysis of the tapes from Friday practice, it was realised that the new suspension Philippe had designed required different settings.

Overnight, the team tweaked the setup based on what they had seen in the data, and the changes proved transformative. Depailler improved his qualifying time by a full 3 seconds, and on race day, he showed the form was no fluke by driving to a fine third place finish. This was quickly followed by another strong showing at Kyalami, where Depailler was unlucky not to win after suffering fuel starvation on the final lap, which allowed Ronnie Peterson’s Lotus to slip by.

Such form was always likely to be rewarded, though, and at Monaco Depailler finally triumphed to claim his first F1 victory, and with it the lead of the championship. At last, Tyrrell had enjoyed tangible benefits from their data logging experiments, and it seemed the only way was up for the pioneering team.

Unfortunately, Tyrrell’s dreams of their data-driven approach taking them to the title were dashed almost as soon as they began to look realistic. Just one race after Depailler’s Monaco victory, the rival Lotus team introduced their new Type 79 chassis, which would utterly dominate the rest of the season. While having hard data to guide setup and development was undoubtedly a boon to Tyrrell, the system’s benefit paled in comparison to the truly game-changing impact of the Lotus 79 and its advanced ground effect aerodynamics.

Kempf would leave Formula 1 in 1980, with Tyrrell’s hoped-for championship using his system never materialising. Kempf’s data logging programme had planted a seed, however, and several teams sought to adopt and improve upon the systems which Kempf and Tyrrell had pioneered in the years that followed.

When Brabham tested their brand new turbocharged BT50 car in practice for the 1981 British Grand Prix, for example, they did so with a radio transmitter behind the cockpit which sent data on the team’s new BMW engine back to the watchful eyes of the engineers in the pits in real time. At the following year’s Monaco Grand Prix, the Ligier team introduced their own car-to-pit telemetry system along with their new JS19 chassis. Renault also employed a similar system, along with a dedicated computer system to analyse the data back in the pits.

It was yet another Formula 1 arms race, with teams rushing to add sensors to more and more parts of the car in order to give engineers in the pits and at the factory as complete an image of what the cars were going through out on track as possible. By 1986, the top teams had brought forth ultra-advanced telemetry systems, such as that designed by Honda for use with its RA166E engine, which powered Williams’ dominant FW11s.

This system allowed Honda’s engineers to monitor their engines for any sign of unreliability in real time, with any issues being relayed to the driver via radio so they could take the appropriate measures to avoid a retirement. Not only that, but the engine data could even be transmitted all the way back to the Honda factory in Japan in order to guide future engine developments.

So advanced was this Honda telemetry system that many of its details remain secret even to this day. Nevertheless, almost all teams in F1 nowadays have some form of comprehensive telemetry system, with their outputs making up a large percentage of the data handled by modern F1 teams on a grand prix weekend.

As F1 teams grew more familiar with computers and other electronic systems, they also realised that they could be used for far more than just data gathering. Rather than simply monitoring parameters such as engine performance or suspension movement, the next logical step was to use electronics to automatically control certain aspects of the car. Among the most prominent technologies which arose from this line of thinking were electronic engine management systems, which came to dominate F1 discussion during the 1980s.

The proliferation of electronic engine management systems was largely a product of the increasing use of turbocharged engines in the 1980s. These engines offered F1 teams immense power, well in excess of the roughly 500 horsepower produced by the best normally aspirated engines of the day, but also came with compromises of their own.

The downsides of early turbocharged engines were threefold. One was their greater fuel consumption than conventional engines. This necessitated carrying extra fuel, which made turbocharged cars significantly heavier than their normally aspirated counterparts — especially when combined with the greater weight of the turbocharged engines themselves.

Early turbocharged cars also suffered from chronic unreliability, as well as the infamous “turbo lag”, which made driving the car more difficult by introducing a momentary delay between when the driver pressed the throttle and when the engine actually began developing usable power.

Engine management systems used a computer to control both fuel injection and ignition in the engine, and offered a potential solution to all three of these problems. The precise control over ignition they provided helped to reduce both turbo lag and unreliability by ensuring that the spark was provided at the optimal point in the combustion cycle.

Perhaps even more prominent however was the improvement that engine management systems provided when it came to fuel efficiency. Not only did they allow teams to control the fuel-air mixture being fed to the engine with a level of precision that simply was not possible with mechanical fuel injection, they even allowed the fuel mixture to be varied moment by moment for the best possible balance between engine power and fuel consumption.

Greater fuel efficiency meant that teams using turbocharged engines could carry less fuel than they had previously needed to, which significantly reduced the weight penalty they suffered compared to their normally aspirated counterparts. Perhaps even more significantly though, it allowed teams to comply with the increasingly tight fuel restrictions which the FIA placed on cars between 1984 and 1988 while still producing excellent horsepower outputs.

Teams such as Renault and Ferrari first started experimenting with electronically controlled fuel injection in 1981 and ’82, but the first full-on engine management system in F1, which controlled not just injection but all elements of the engine, was the Bosch Motronic ECU (Engine Control Unit).

This unit was initially supplied to the Brabham team with their BMW engine, who won the 1983 world driver’s championship with a car equipped with the system. Later that same year the system would also be fielded by McLaren in tandem with their new TAG-Porsche engine and the MP4/1E chassis adapted to house it.

It was in 1984 that the advantages of engine management systems would really make themselves known, however. That year saw refuelling banned and a 220 litre fuel tank capacity limit placed on all cars.

This suddenly made fuel efficiency an absolutely crucial metric, and while other teams jumped on the engine management system bandwagon with self-built engine management computers or systems sourced from third-party firms such as Bendix, none of them could initially match the efficiency conferred by the Motronic ECU.

This proved particularly true when the Motronic system was paired with the TAG-Porsche engine used by McLaren, which had been designed in direct conjunction with Bosch. While other teams could occasionally match or even beat the McLarens when it came to peak pace, none could do it while being so fuel efficient and reliable. McLaren therefore cruised to one of the most dominant F1 championship victories ever in 1984.

Like almost every other boundary-shifting technology in Formula 1 history, engine management systems became a development battleground, with teams looking to develop ever more advanced ECUs and provide their drivers and engineers with additional electronic systems to aid them in winning races.

Electronic in-car fuel readouts linked to the engine management system were one early addition. McLaren were among the first to introduce such a device on their MP4/2B in Brazil 1985, while rivals Williams and Lotus followed suit from that year’s Canadian and German Grands Prix respectively.

This not only gave the driver a tactical advantage by giving them an idea of how hard they could push, but also introduced a new strategic element into Formula 1 by forcing drivers to consider whether it was best to push early on and save fuel later in the race, maintain a consistent pace throughout, or conserve fuel early to prepare for a late-race surge. Some drivers such as Alain Prost quickly became masters of this tactical chess match.

Fuel displays were far from the only development stemming from the ECU arms race, though. The engine management systems themselves also reached mind-boggling levels of sophistication. By 1986 the latest M1.7 revision of Bosch’s Motronic system was capable of measuring and factoring in ambient conditions such as temperature, air density and humidity when calculating the required fuel-air ratio — a crucial change given that season saw a further reduction in fuel tank capacity from 220 to 195 litres.

Despite this development, the pace of improvement of engine management systems was such that even the once-cutting-edge Motronic system was reckoned to have been outstripped when it came to fuel efficiency by rival systems such as that produced by the IHI corporation for Honda’s RA166E engine.

The use of a single central computer to control all electrical aspects of the engine also granted notable advantages beyond just fuel efficiency and reliability. Chief among these advantages was flexibility. Teams soon realised that through a simple change of an EEPROM (Electronically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) chip in the ECU, they could completely change the behaviour of the engine.

In race trim, the computer could be set to an efficiency-focused mode where the fuel-air mixture fed to the engine was as lean as possible to attain optimal mileage and avoid running dry before the race ended.

Meanwhile, for qualifying, the race EEPROM would be replaced with a qualifying-specific chip, which made the engine consume huge quantities of fuel (both for power and for the fuel’s cooling effect to avoid melting the engine) and sent power outputs rocketing to well in excess of 1000 brake horsepower. This was, in essence, the birth of what Mercedes would years later term “party mode”.

For some teams though, even the manufacturer-supplied qualifying engine modes were not enough to satisfy their craving for performance. This was notably the case for the Benetton team, who in 1986 were running the notorious BMW M12 4-cylinder turbocharged engine.

The M12 was already among the most powerful engines in Formula 1 when running in qualifying spec with boost pressures up to a staggering 5.5 bar (80 PSI), but one engineer called Pat Symonds had an idea of how to attain even more power. He therefore took to surreptitiously reprogramming the qualifying EEPROM chips which BMW provided in order to push the engines even closer to their breaking point than the manufacturer would usually allow.

The performance that these reprogrammed chips unlocked was spectacular to say the least, with rumoured power outputs of some 1,300bhp. Whatever the power figure, the results on track spoke for themselves, as Benetton excelled at all three of the main power-centric circuits on the 1986 calendar, with young Gerhard Berger second on the grid in Belgium and teammate Teo Fabi claiming pole at Austria and Monza. To this day, the Benetton B186 in qualifying specification remains the most powerful car ever seen in Formula 1.

While the decision to move away from turbocharged engines in 1989 put paid to the huge disparity between qualifying and race engine modes seen during the mid 1980s, F1 electronics and engine modes would remain a major talking point into the 1990s and beyond.

In 1992 and ’93 for example, Williams made prominent use of engine mappings which cut the ignition to specific cylinders of their Renault V10 power unit when sensors on the car’s wheels detected a loss of grip. This constituted Formula 1’s first traction control system, and when paired with the active suspension system, which Williams had made famous (whose conspicuous absence from this article is the result of me writing a dedicated piece on the history of the system), it made for an utterly dominant package.

It was the rise of systems such as traction control that finally brought about the end of the electronic revolution, which had first begun in F1 back in the 1970s. In response to the increasing complexity of the cars, dominance of single teams such as Williams, and cries that electronic gadgets were making driver skill irrelevant, the FIA acted decisively. In 1994, the decision was taken to ban all so-called “electronic driver aids”, such as the aforementioned traction control, computerised active suspension, and other systems such as anti-lock brakes. In one fell swoop, many of the products of 20 years worth of electronic development were swept away, leaving behind a very different, and some might say purer, Formula 1.

However, even the 1994 changes couldn’t completely walk back the involvement of computers and electronics in Formula 1 — that horse had bolted. The 1994 rules also couldn’t prevent controversy arising over electronics, with Benetton aptly proving that fact in the very first year of the driver aid ban via the hidden “Option 13” launch control setting available in their ECU. It seems apt that the team that had such success and influence with the proliferation of custom engine modes back in 1986 would be at the centre of this furore.

If truth be told, though, it was never the intention of the 1994 rules to revert Formula 1 back to being a purely mechanical sport. Despite so often being the subject of ire among F1 fans for ruining the purported purity of the sport, the influence of electronics and computers on the sport has largely been a positive one.

Fans often look back with rose-tinted glasses at the heady days of the turbo era, when cars were producing over 1200 horsepower from fire-spitting monster engines, and lament how F1 has lost its way. Few acknowledge, however, that such a situation would not have been possible without the engine management computers, which manufacturers shelled out exorbitant amounts of money on when the technology behind them was still cutting-edge.

While some may resent the extent to which electronics have influenced the evolution of Formula 1, those people can at least take solace in two facts. One is that, if precedent is anything to go by, the sport will legislate against electronic “gizmos” if their influence on the racing action becomes too great.

Secondly, the history of electronic involvement in F1 stretches sufficiently far back that even the eras many look back on fondly most likely featured extensive use of electronic systems, even if they perhaps weren’t as overt as today…