Q&A: Alex Burns, COO at AT&T Williams F1 team

As the COO of the AT&T Williams Formula One team, Alex Burns works in one of the most fast-moving, dynamic, intensive and competitive industries around.

His role since May 2005 has been to improve the way the business operates and create a team that can work to the highest standard in even the most pressurised of situations. This includes attracting the right technology and IT partners to the team.

A major part of Burns' preparations for the Grand Prix season opener in Australia - as well as the rest of the campaign - is the IT and technology the team depends on. This is crucial in the team's constant efforts to shave those precious milliseconds from lap times to steal a march on its rivals.

With the 2007 F1 season fast approaching, silicon.com caught up with Burns to discuss the place of technology in the sport and why IT is so crucial to an F1 team.

silicon.com: How important is IT to the performance of the team during the season?
Burns: IT is absolutely vital to our performance. This is a technologically very demanding sport - the most technologically advanced sport in the world. The cars change fundamentally year-on-year and we develop them continuously throughout the season. By the end of the season we will have brought significant extra performance to that car as well - and all of that is underpinned by our IT infrastructure.

What particular challenges do you face?
What's really different here is the fact we go to tracks so much. We are very short of time and need a complete infrastructure in place - and need to have connectivity between the test track and our headquarters here. That’s not something you commonly see in other industries.

We have to have a rack of services in place in the garage to run the cars; to connect the cars up; to connect the data; to sort the data. We have to have connectivity within the garage environment and then we have to have connectivity back to HQ.

A Grand Prix weekend runs absolutely to the clock and if you've missed it, you've missed it. You can't be late for a race - it's just not an option. So it's a very precise industry in terms of time and it's also very demanding in terms of travelling a lot and needing to establish a high level of connectivity wherever we go and when we need it.

What role do your technology sponsors play within the team?
We look to our technology-focused sponsors to help us to be absolutely at the cutting edge of whatever their particular technology is to help us move in front of the other teams.

So where else does technology come in?
It'll be a Lenovo laptop connected to the car when we start it up. We connect the laptop to it, we send a signal, someone puts the starter in the car, we turn it over without a spark - so we turn it over without ignition - that generates all the pressures in the various systems and the notebook is then used to check everything is functioning correctly and we'll start it again and send a signal from the notebook to the car to say 'start'.

We use CFD (computer fluid dynamics - an aerodynamics simulation and development software) extensively and this is an area of possible future co-operation with Lenovo. At the moment, we're very much focused on getting the notebooks and the PCs in place. But we have had some preliminary discussions [with Lenovo] in the realm of CFD as they do have a substantial capability in high performance computing.

Are there any technology initiatives you are planning to bring in during the coming season?
The main thing to do during the season is to evolve the aerodynamics of the cars. So that's where the wind tunnels and the CFD comes in. The aerodynamics is the big thing we can do to give differential performance between the cars. So that's the key area of focus for us.

And after?
If we've got something that's working and that's reliable and robust, we're not going to put through changes. The time to change is in the off-season when we're not racing and we've got time to do changes, to do proper testing, to make sure what we've got is reliable and robust. This is mission-critical stuff and what we don't want to do is introduce changes at short notice because of the risks that introduces as well.

Do you think with tobacco advertising now outlawed tech sponsors will fill the gap?
I don't think it's as binary as tobacco leaving, technology companies arriving. I think the world moves on, things change. I think that tech companies see an obvious association with the technology in Formula One, which is very advanced technologically and that's why I think it is quite attractive to tech companies to get an association with a very high-tech machine, which is what they're getting.

What's really in it for the sponsors?
Formula One is also the most watched annual global sporting event. We get an awful lot of coverage week in, week out - right through season. So, for all sorts of consumer-facing brands, Formula One is a very attractive proposition.

With AT&T it's very much about association with technology, about being able to talk about doing special things with us, providing the products and services that they're providing to us can also be provided to other customers. It's a good way for AT&T to showcase what they can do to other customers and other industries.

And finally, what are the prospects for the team in 2007?
There's a good sense of optimism around. The plan is to put 2006 firmly behind us and do better this year.