AWS and Formula 1 announce six new racing performance stats

With less than two weeks to go for the resumption of the 2020 season, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Formula 1 have announced six new performance statistics that will help fans analyze the flood of real-time data during races. This will help them gauge the performance of the cars on track and predict race outcomes. These statistics will use a variety of AWS offerings, including Amazon Kinesis, AWS Lambda, and Amazon SageMaker.

To start off, on July 3-5, at the RedBull Ring in Austria, the debutant 'Car Performance Scores' will display an individual car’s performance using four metrics: Low-Speed Cornering, High-Speed Cornering, Straight Line, and Car Handling⁠. These are vital indicators of a car's race performance and will allow fans to compare different F1 cars on the track.

The Car Performance Score stats are in addition to the five other metrics that will debut this season. Complete details on those are as follows:

Ultimate Driver Speed Comparison: Allows race fans to see how their favorite drivers compare to other drivers in history, dating back to 1983, to help determine the fastest driver of all time (debuts August 7-9 at the EMIRATES FORMULA 1 70th ANNIVERSARY GRAND PRIX 2020).

High-Speed/Low-Speed Corner Performance: Allows fans to see how well drivers tackle the fastest bends on the track travelling at more than 175 kph/109 mph and slow cornering (below 125 kph/78 mph) compared to other vehicles, which is critical to lap time (debuts August 28-30 at the FORMULA 1 ROLEX BELGIAN GRAND PRIX).

Driver Skills Rating: Breaks down and scores driver skills, based on the most important factors for overall performance, to help identify the best “total driver” on the track. By calculating varying subsets of qualifying round performance, starts, race pace, tire management, and overtaking/defending styles, this insight will provide an overall driver ranking (debuts the second half of the season).

Car/Team Development & Overall Season Performance: As the season unfolds, this will plot a team’s cumulative performance from race to race to uncover the development rates of each team (debuts the second half of the season).

Qualifying and Race Pace Predictions: Gather data from practice and qualifying laps to predict which team is poised for success ahead of each race session. These predictions will create heightened intrigue and excitement for the Saturday qualifying session and Sunday race (debuts the second half of the season).

Vis-à-vis the initiative, Rob Smedley, the Chief Engineer of Formula 1, stated that “We’re excited to be expanding this successful relationship to bring even more insights to life, allowing fans to go deeper into the many ways that drivers and racing teams work together to affect success.” While Mike Clayville, Vice President of Worldwide Commercial Sales at AWS remarked that “This year, we’re thrilled to extend the power of F1 data in the cloud and unlock new insights that help fans understand more of F1’s rich complexity.”