Crestron announces the sponsorship of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team as a Regional Partner for all North American races, beginning with the Miami Grand Prix on May 6.
The global electronics manufacturer says this partnership began when Crestron technology was installed throughout the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team headquarters in Brackley, United Kingdom, a state-of-the-art technology center for the design and development of the team’s F1 cars.
Though video conferencing has been a factor in F1 racing for quite some time, it exploded during the pandemic and the increased adoption of hybrid work. The Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team was well prepared for this transition, having integrated Crestron room control systems including Crestron touch screens and DM NVX AV-over-IP technology into Brackley facilities.
“One of the main reasons we chose Crestron was they were synonymous with meeting room technology. That proved to us that not only did they have a track record of past performance, but also that we could rely upon them as an innovative partner for the long term,” comments David Cadywould, head of core technology for Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team.
How Crestron Digital Workplace Supports Critical Mercedes Team Processes
In order to more fully support a corporate culture built on immediate, in-person communication, the team installed Crestron to further equip their tens of meeting places and over a thousand employees with frictionless collaboration solutions that prioritized performance and reliability.
Engineers, designers, IT teams, pit crews, factory technicians, business operations teams, and executives used the Crestron Flex Digital Workplace platform for video conferencing throughout the 2021 Formula 1 season, which helped the team break records.
Mercedes-AMG stresses that performance is paramount in the world of racing, especially with regard to video collaboration technology. For world championship-winning teams like Mercedes F1, collaboration technologies must provide both speed and reliability so that when people walk into meeting spaces, everything works straight away, regardless of how many people are participating or where they are joining from.
“There are times when our senior engineering community will fly straight from one race location to the next without returning to the UK, and that’s exactly where the link between the track and the factory is so critical,” says Cadywould.
“Following each of the race events, there are a series of race debriefs where an immense amount of information and data gathered at the track needs to be disseminated to the factory and around each department of the business, and we can’t afford any lag time.”
Brad Hintze, executive vice president, global marketing for Crestron, notes that both Crestron and Mercedes-AMG share similar goals for performance and reliability.
More news from Crestron: CE Pro Podcast #103: How Crestron Home Continues to Expand
“Crestron and the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team are both high-performing teams with an intense desire to deliver excellence and we’re thrilled to play a role in their success, whether that’s through cutting edge technology or sponsoring the team across the series of North American events,” says Hintze.
“We both want to maintain a frictionless experience. Anything that slows down the collaboration process leads to diminished performance on the track, so we’re proud to provide solutions that reliably enable immediate meeting experiences from the factory, the paddock, debrief rooms, or anywhere collaboration happens.”
After using the Crestron system, Cadywould emphasizes that choosing the N.J.-based company’s collaboration solutions was the right decision for Mercedes-AMG racing.
“Crestron was the right way to go based on the fact we’ve used their technologies for quite some time, and it’s always been reliable. We talk about performance quite a lot, being the type of team we are, but it’s actually reliability that we chase and that makes some of our decision making quite straightforward,” adds Cadywould.
