Why F1 risks giving fans a data overload

Formula 1's plans to give fans greater access to data might seem like a win on the surface, but does it run the risk of stripping away the element of surprise completely?

Jonathan Noble Dec 14, 2018, 1:08 PM

Upd: Dec 14, 2018, 1:12 PM

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Formula 1 is a sporting category that thrives on data. A car will not leave the garage without a host of sensors monitoring everything it is doing - with all that information rapidly fired back in real time to factories that can be thousands of miles away.

Whether it is car speeds, tyre temperatures, oil pressures, G-forces or even driver heart rate, during the course of a season trillions of pieces of information are transmitted around the world in the hope that a magic detail can help transform performance.

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Author Jonathan Noble

Jonathan Noble is Motorsport.com’s Formula 1 editor. Having graduated from University of Sussex Jonathan worked for sports news agency Collings Sports reporting on F1, F3, touring cars and other sports, with articles appearing in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Reuters, Autosport and other publications. In 1999 he moved to Haymarket Publishing to become a senior editor at Autosport Special Projects, and one year later he became Autosport’s grand prix editor. In 2015 he moved to Motorsport Network, becoming the F1 editor for Motorsport.com. He is also a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers, and sits on the FIA Media Council.

Jonathan has won multiple awards for journalism - in 1991 he was the winner of the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Sir William Lyons’ Award for young journalists, in 2010 he was awarded the Outstanding Individual accolade for consumer journalism in the Haymarket wards, in 2011 he won Haymarket’s Scoop of the Year, and in 2018 he was awarded a prestigious Medaglia d’Oro at the Lorenzo Bandini Awards for his contribution to F1 journalism.