McLaren in pole position with data

McLaren Electronic Systems (MES) has been using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 as it prepares for the 2008 Formula One season opener in Australia on 16 March.

MES (formerly TAG Electronic Systems) is the electronics and software arm of the McLaren Group which also runs the Formula One team Lewis Hamilton races for.

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The organisation has been using a pre-release version of SQL Server 2008 to run mission-critical applications for the F1 team's testing and development work and will also use it at races once the season starts.

MES MD Peter van Manen said the most important part of SQL Server for the team is the Filestream application, which collates unstructured data and feeds it into the SQL Server database engine.

With each car producing 2GB of data per race from 125 sensors - which is often received in an unstructured way via telemetry - this kind of technology is vital to make sense of the information.

Speaking at the London launch of SQL Server 2008, van Manen said: "You need to be able to deal with a large amount of data and present it to the user. The fidelity of the data is crucial. To win the races we have to make decisions to the second. They [engineers] need the data at their fingertips.

"From our perspective [Filestream] is the killer feature of SQL 2008. It gives us performance, the integrity and the robustness needed for motor racing."

This kind of technology will become increasingly important in the future, he added: "We're in a world where more and more data is developing."

MES has designed and built the Engine Control Unit that will be used by all of the F1 teams from the 2008 season until 2010.

The company also supplies systems to the World Rally Championship and motorbike series, MotoGP.