Formula 1 partners with Amazon web services to enhance race telecasts. F1 has also selected AWS Elemental Media Services to power its video asset workflows.

F1 owner Liberty Media has “signed Amazon Web Services to a global sponsorship and marketing deal,” marking the “first new global sponsor that has come on board since Liberty took control of the racing series,” according to John Ourand in this week’s Sports Business Journal. As a result, Formula One Group is moving the vast majority of its infrastructure from on-premises data centres to Amazon Web Services (AWS), standardising on AWS’s machine learning and data analytics services to accelerate its cloud transformation.

Formula 1 will work with AWS to enhance its race strategies, data tracking systems, and digital broadcasts through a number of services. These services include Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed machine learning service that enables users to build and deploy machine learning models, AWS Lambda, AWS’s event-driven server-less computing service, and AWS analytics services, to uncover metrics that will change the fan experience.

Formula One has also selected AWS Elemental Media Services to power its video asset workflows.

Using Amazon SageMaker, Formula 1’s data scientists are training deep learning models with more than 65 years of historical race data, stored in both Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Glacier. With this information, Formula 1 can extract race performance statistics to make race predictions and give fans up-to-date insights. By streaming real-time race data to AWS using Amazon Kinesis, F1 can also capture and process key performance data for each car. Amazon SageMaker can then help pinpoint how a driver is performing and whether or not drivers have pushed themselves over the limit.

“For our needs, AWS outperforms all other cloud providers, in speed, scalability, reliability, global reach, partner community, and breadth and depth of cloud services available. By leveraging Amazon SageMaker and AWS’s machine learning services, we are now able to deliver these powerful insights and predictions to fans in real time. We are also excited that the Formula 1 Motorsports division will run High Performance Compute workloads in a scalable environment on AWS. This will significantly increase the number and quality of the simulations our aerodynamics team can run as we work to develop the new car design rules for Formula 1.” – Pete Samara, director of innovation and digital technology at Formula 1, recently explained.