Case Study: Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team achieves 95% faster database queries and over 90% less storage management time with Pure Storage

Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team - Customer Case Study

The MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team—responsible for race-to-race incremental improvements driven by data from 200+ sensors per car (≈400 GB per race, ≈9 TB per season)—faced growing pressure to collect, manage and share ever-larger datasets, support multi-disciplinary design and engineering workloads, and run a portable, trackside-capable infrastructure that wouldn’t slow development cycles.

By moving virtually all production applications to Pure Storage all‑flash arrays and adopting its Evergreen model, the team gained dramatic performance, reliability and portability. Key results: a common SQL query dropped from ~4½ minutes to 13 seconds (~95% faster), file-open workflows fell by about two‑thirds, data‑center rack space shrank 68%, storage administration time dropped over 90%, CFD jobs ran up to 15% faster, and non‑disruptive upgrades and lighter trackside gear cut operating costs and complexity.

Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team

Matt Harris

Head of IT