How Atlassian plans to give Williams an F1 edge and test its own software
Mike Cannon-Brookes is putting his flagship software to the test, betting it can give Formula One team Williams an edge at this weekend’s Grand Prix – and it will come down to milliseconds.
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Mike Cannon-Brookes is putting his flagship software to the test, betting it can give Williams an edge at this weekend’s Grand Prix and help revive the F1 team’s fortunes.
Williams finished second last of the 10 F1 teams last season, and is pinning its comeback hopes not only on its drivers and mechanical expertise but also on Atlassian.
Team principal James Vowles said mere “milliseconds” was the difference between good and bad F1 teams – such was the level of refinement needed in the sport, which is becoming increasingly reliant on tech to eke out the slightest advantage. One F1 tyre alone contains “hundreds of sensors” to track performance data.
But Mr Vowles said Williams has been hobbled by outdated processes – including tracking the 20,000 components needed to build an F1 car using Excel spreadsheets – so much so that it was a “miracle” that they could build a race car.
“I found an Excel spreadsheet with 100,000 lines in it and an individual that was losing years of his life everyday trying to figure out how to bring those together into a car. There were about 700 people who weren’t collaborating … a lot of great people all pointing their own way,” Mr Vowles said.
“What Atlassian is absolutely fantastic at is collaboration, teamwork, so the tools that enable us to work together – not as individuals but as effectively a unit aligned and pointed the right way.”
Atlassian, which has a market value of $US56.25bn ($89.75bn), has become Williams’s title sponsor this year. As part of the deal, the F1 team will adopt the tech titan’s system of work.
Williams drivers Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz say the battle for this year’s F1 championship will be in the middle of the grid, saying the top teams were effectively set.
If they achieve that goal, Mr Cannon-Brookes will be able to showcase to the world the full potential of Atlassian’s software. He said Williams and F1 more broadly could also show that it’s possible to achieve net zero emissions, as the sport races to meet its ambitious climate targets.
“It’s an amazing storytelling vehicle for us in terms of how we literally take technology teams and business teams and help them come together for a better business outcome,” Mr Cannon-Brookes said.
“This is what we do at a bank or insurance company or a healthcare company. But it’s not quite as visceral an example. There are people inside a bank running around and collaborating but you don’t see it like you do in a garage where you’re literally see what has happened in the virtual world – the cloud in Atlassian’s platform – and here is what’s just happened in the physical world, and how they’re connected.”
F1 is different to other sports. A sponsor can’t just slap their sticker on the car, the either have to help make the vehicle or contribute to the team’s actual functioning, which has created an opportunity for Mr Cannon-Brookes.
“If you’re looking at sports and sports sponsorships, you need a team sport, but not a team sport that’s just like rugby or something, which is on field, great. There’s a team of people playing different positions. But it’s not really a technology aspect to it. So it’s very hard for us to demonstrate how we can actually help.”
Williams was not alone in its reliance on spreadsheets. Almost 25 per cent of Australian knowledge workers spend almost 25 per cent of their days – or 10 hours a week – hunting down information buried in email threads, Slack channels, and siloed systems – and often end up not finding it anyway, according to an Atlassian survey.
This has become one of the biggest drains on productivity and wage growth. Crucially, the Atlassian survey of 12,000 workers across six countries, found hunting for data and information hinders collaboration, with half of the respondents saying their work is delayed because they are waiting for information from other teams.
About the same percentage fear they are often duplicating work – reinventing the wheel – because they don’t realise it’s already been completed by someone else in the organisation.
Mr Vowles said the way Williams was working had become a “nightmare”.
“It was what I would call survival in the best way possible. When we were building cars, it was almost a miracle that you had a car at the end of it.”
F1 is also seeking to shake-off its carbon-belching image. The sport’s governing body says so far cut its carbon footprint by 13 per cent as of 2022 versus 2018. This is a “significant step” to hitting net zero by 2030, it said.
In its latest ‘impact’ report, Williams said it has been “consistently reducing emissions”“ across its operations. Its Scope 1 emissions have fallen by about 6 per cent a year to 497 tonnes.
Originally published as How Atlassian plans to give Williams an F1 edge and test its own software
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