Mercedes engineer says F1 teams can show more data to fans

In recent years, Formula 1 fans have been getting more and more data during the TV broadcasts. This is provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the graphics often give more information on tyre wear, car development and predictions of differences in qualifying and the race. According to a Mercedes engineer, teams could show a lot more data to fans to improve the broadcasts.

Dom Riefstahl has access to all the team's data channels. Watching a race from the couch on paternity leave, he noted that there is more room for providing data to fans.

"There’s still a lot of data that we can provide to the fans and provide to the public, or to the people just doing the commentary and talking about the race, in terms of helping them make more out of the story and understand some of the background stuff that’s going on", the Mercedes engineer tells Autosport.com. "If you have more of that data available, and you had somebody who understands how to read the data and explain it, you can just show so much better what is actually going on."

Pirelli should show more data

According to Riefstahl, the laps of Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton could be compared, for example. "‘Look, you can see that he’s gaining there but he’s losing there’, or ‘they’re on a different wing, they’re on a different PU mode, oh he’s turned up his engine.’ All of these things are very readable from literally just the speed trace. And you’ve not really given anything away."

"There are some things that teams wouldn’t want. But there is other information you could easily give away. For example, I don’t see why the FIA don’t make a deal with Pirelli and say, what is your actual tyre wear? Which tyre is going to run out first for the majority of cars? What does it mean in terms of balance?"

"If Pirelli was just to present that data to everyone, which they have, because they collect it on all the teams and they can anonymise it and say, the average around the paddock is this. If you take even just the top five, that’s what is going to happen at the top of the race, and you can just make so much more of a story out of it", says the Mercedes engineer.