For the sport of Formula 1, Red Bull Racing Honda, and all their technical partners, 2020 was a year unlike any other. It was filled with uncertainty, disruption, ever-changing timelines, and a complete shift from a traditional working model to a remote working model.

Despite the constant challenges the sport faced, Formula 1 managed to complete a condensed, shorter racing schedule, with 17 races instead of the initially planned 22. And like many companies, Red Bull Racing Honda quickly adapted, learned, and, arguably, benefited from the restrictions put in place by both Formula 1 and the UK government. Through a collaborative effort, the outcome was a second-place finish in the 2020 Constructors Championship, delivering 11 podium finishes and two race wins.

“Being flexible and able to react to change is integral to what we do as a team and as a sport — and last year really put everyone to the test in how well prepared they are to do that!” says Christian Horner, Team Principal, Red Bull Racing Honda. “We had changes to the race schedule, the technical regulations, and also the budget regulations, all in the space of a few months, and at the same time we were all working from our kitchen tables. We relied on our Innovation Partners in this challenging time to provide the right tools and infrastructure to enable our team to stay agile. Whether that’s working from home but having access to all the tools and computing power of the factory or switching from your day job of making front wings to building ventilators, Citrix enabled us to react faster and work smarter.”

The cost caps and regulations that Horner is referring to are not to be taken lightly. The cost cap was introduced in October of 2020 by the FIA, Formula 1’s governing body, limiting spending on operations for all teams during the 2021 season and beyond. The goal is to deliver a more competitive championship, promote a level playing field, and ensure the long-term financial stability and sustainability of Formula 1’s 10 teams. As of this January, the cap was set at $145m for 2021. The goal is to find ways of reducing every team’s costs, particularly their short-term operating costs, to improve their long-term sustainability.

“Every F1 team knew this was coming, but it was obviously more challenging as there was a lot of work to be done leading up to that point,” says Zoe Chilton, Head of Strategic Partnerships. “Our team had to navigate everything remotely due to the on-and-off national lockdown between the months of March 2020 and March 2021, forcing a majority of our workforce to work remotely offsite. Much of the planning and collaboration working toward adhering to the budget cap took place through remote working. Now we’re within the new budget cap and our manufacturing and engineering team have been incredibly efficient in how they are progressing, so we’re in a good place. The cost cap has fundamentally changed the sport and how we will operate moving forward.”

A Focus on 2021

Now with a shifted focus and all eyes looking ahead towards the 2021 season, Red Bull Racing Honda has solidified a strong new driver line up with Mexico’s Sergio Perez joining the team’s veteran Max Verstappen.

“The big news over the winter was the arrival of Sergio to the team,” Horner says. “He has settled in quickly, and, while he is experienced, he is also a laid-back character. He knows what he wants and has 10 seasons of F1 under his belt.”

With the combined experience of the drivers, the rest of the team can focus on building the new car, and they have completed a tremendous amount of work in the off season despite the restrictions. During this time, almost half the team’s workforce had to work from home, including finance, marketing, HR, and IT — all teams that need to stay connected. The remote workforce also included a substantial number of the team’s engineering resource — key to the team’s preparation for the upcoming season. The benefit to being able to work remotely through this difficult period was significant, and Citrix technology helped to enable this seamless transition.

“The entirety of Red Bull Racing Honda’s key offseason engineering focus is between November and late February,” Chilton says. “Throughout this period, Citrix allowed our key engineers and crucial members of staff to truly engage with all of the same tools they would have had on site and work as closely as possible to their normal way of working without being in the same building as their colleagues. We are just recently ramping back up who is coming into the office to kick off the 2021 season, and we’re looking ahead towards a full season calendar — one preseason test event in Bahrain followed by 23 races.”

A Season of Challenges, Opportunities

The team that runs the 2021 car at testing have had additional challenges this year because the FIA has allocated fewer days to test the new cars on track. This is the team’s only opportunity before the first race to see if what was designed in the off-season actually works physically on track. In 2020, there were six days of preseason testing in Barcelona. This year, it’s only three days, and much farther away, in Bahrain. This has forced a substantial reduction in the number of team members sent to the test this year due to the distance travelled, the limited days on track, and cost-cutting measures. During testing, there’s a huge amount of focus on the personnel trackside having access to everything they need when they need it.

“Accessing tools and sharing information with team members back at the factory is incredibly important,” Chilton says. “Thanks to Citrix, we now have even more access trackside to heavy weight tools, such as CAD drawings that we may normally use at the factory. At testing, mechanics trackside piecing new car parts together for the first time in whole, can review and analyze CAD models live, in real-time, showing them exactly how the new car parts are assembled. This access, provided by Citrix, is incredibly helpful for us to pull heavy data and run it remotely so mechanics and engineers are quicker and more efficient, seeing the 3D car models firsthand.”

Citrix also provides an additional benefit to the race team by enabling a larger team of engineers to access trackside information virtually whether back at the team’s headquarters in the UK or at home.

“We can collaborate with a bigger team that would normally be trackside by providing them with Citrix machines that run on the trackside datacenters,” Chilton says. “This year, when the race team travelled to Bahrain for the first test in mid-March, we had a broader team of R&D and aerodynamicists reviewing live trackside data remotely. This is now in addition to the normal operations room staff that work remotely from the factory — all using Citrix machines hosted trackside in Bahrain.

“Providing real time access for both the team trackside, at the operations room in the UK, and additional staff working from home, it’s a win-win for Red Bull Racing Honda. Our team can learn faster and drink from the firehose of data more effectively. There’s a lot of information and learnings that need to be extrapolated from a few days of testing and with a two-week gap in between testing and the first race of the season in Bahrain, so there’s enough time to digest that information and tweak car components to maximize performance in preparation for the start of the season. Citrix is providing an amazing data accessibility tool which allows us the flexibility to digest data and make immediate changes and improvements to the car if needed.”

If you needed more convincing of the amount of dedicated hard work and collaboration between the entirety of Red Bull Racing Honda’s workforce and their Innovation Partners over the last five months, just look to the 28 points the team secured with their second-place podium finish and fifth-place result at the season kickoff in Bahrain.

Red Bull Racing Honda is determined to adapt and overcome any adversity and challenge in their path to improve their performance on track. And with the support of like-minded partners such as Citrix, there is nothing stopping them from securing more podiums finishes and race wins this year as they work to come one step closer to another Constructors’ Championship.

Learn more about Citrix and Red Bull Racing Honda.