Motor racing-As Formula One evolves, AI becomes part of the race

* AI spurs efficiency on and off the track

* Eight AI partnerships signed in last six months

* F1 returned at Miami after no races in April

By Streisand Neto

LONDON, May 4 (Reuters) - Artificial Intelligence’s integration into Liberty Media-owned Formula One and its 11 teams has been noticeable on- and off-track in the already highly tech-powered sport.

Eight new AI partnerships were signed in the past six months alone, according to research firm Ampere Analysis.

Among them, nine-time F1 constructors' champion Williams are partnering with AI company Anthropic for its Claude model to support team operations and race strategy.

"It's much more than a sticker on a car or a sticker in a billboard," Williams’ board advisor Peter Kenyon told Reuters. "We see it as one of our differentiating points: how can this partner help us in that journey back to the top?”

Whereas F1 cars in yesteryear had a plethora of brands with tobacco companies at the centre, now partnerships often centre on AI and tech companies helping the teams understand datasets, while benefiting from great exposure.

“What Anthropic and our tech team are doing are understanding the opportunities and then integrating those into our business to be able to demonstrate for ourselves and them, and showcase their technology in the pursuit of getting Williams back to the top,” Kenyon added. AI can be a key tool enabling teams to navigate new regulations and new cost cap rules, now set at $215 million.

“Efficiency is one of the ubiquitous benefits of AI products, meaning a natural synergy between teams and AI brands,” said Adam Lewis, a senior analyst from Ampere Analysis.

Technology led the top 10 spending categories for F1 teams, reaching an estimated $769 million last season, up 41% from the previous year, according to intelligence platform SponsorUnited.

AI and machine learning brands account for four of the top 15 new sponsorship investors, a SponsorUnited report also showed, including $65 billion-valued cloud infrastructure company CoreWeave, which has a partnership with Aston Martin's F1 team.

In the 2025 season, the single-seater motorsport reached $2.54 billion in total team sponsorship and was the second-highest grossing sports property behind America's National Football League which achieved $2.7 billion.

HELPING WITH ADMIN, RULES, TRACK DECISIONS

AI has been innovative in sifting through administrative tasks and interpreting key rules within sporting and technical regulations, helping engineers take swifter decisions during on-track situations which were impossible decades ago.

“So it's gone from a sort of basic AI to more of an agentic approach where rather than just searching for something, it's actually providing decisions for us," Jack Harrington, the group partnership lead for Red Bull, told Reuters. The Red Bull outfit, which four-time champion Max Verstappen races for, has a partnership with $494 billion-valued software company Oracle, and has embedded its technological nous across the team.

"So it's really playing into the strength of AI as an enabler for our team. Allowing them (engineers) to focus on the core responsibilities they have and perform better at what they do," Harrington added.

Technology companies like Alphabet-owned Google are also seeing positives from entering the F1 arena.

“These blue-chip companies are using Formula One as a launchpad and spotlight for their own AI products or re-brandings,” Lewis said, noting Google’s partnership with F1's McLaren shifted to Google Gemini, a generative AI tool, from Google Pixel. As an organisation, F1, which returned at Miami after no races in April, has also embraced AI. Its partnership with Amazon Web Services uses generative AI for live television broadcasting and in 2024 it applied generative AI to the design of the Montreal trophy after it was crafted by a silversmith in the United Kingdom.

“I think F1 has the never-ending, unquenchable thirst for the latest technology,” Lenovo’s Global Chief Information Officer Arthur Hu told Reuters.

Lenovo, a Hong Kong-listed technology company, is one of F1’s global partners and has been in a partnership with the organisation since 2022.

Hu said that Lenovo helps F1 to enhance productivity, mobility and remote collaboration through Lenovo laptops and devices, including AI PCs, to support with the delivery of races.

“Formula One is at the sweet spot where it's an intensely technical sport ... And so I think that only opens up new possibilities,” Hu said. (Reporting by Streisand Neto; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Alan Baldwin)