Motorsport: Driven by speed
Formula One is an innovative and high performance arena where speed, precision and accuracy is of the essence at all times. To maintain pole position, Oracle Red Bull Racing has been in a long-term technical partnership with Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division. Machinery heard more at the F1 team’s Milton Keynes factory
Oracle Red Bull Racing (ORBR) is at the top of its game winning races at a canter in recent seasons and has arguably had the biggest impact on Formula One of any other team over the last two decades since it joined the grid.
The Milton Keynes-based team has totally dominated F1 for the last three years and since its first race at the 2005 Australian Grand Prix, it has secured the World Drivers’ Championship seven times, including the last three with Max Verstappen and it has also won the World Constructors’ Championships six times.
The ORBR team has been seen as the ‘maverick’ in the pit lane since the energy drinks company Red Bull bought the Jaguar Racing team in late 2004 and, a disruptor to the motorsport status quo, competing on the front row with historical racing teams like Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes.
In order to maximise its performance, consistently manufacture the most innovative, fastest and best-performing F1 cars with the utmost accuracy and precision, ORBR has been in a long-term partnership with Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division.
Last month, ORBR and Hexagon held an Innovation Day for journalists at ORBR’s Technology Campus to explain more about the partnership, the benefits that it brings to both, while giving a behind the scenes look at what keeps F1’s grid-leading team in pole position.
Kat Farmer, ORBR’s senior technical partnership manager, explains that the Hexagon laser scanners, coordinate measuring machines (CMM), portable measuring arms and software they operate is used every day to build, develop and improve ORBR’s F1 cars.
Farmer notes: “We select our partners at ORBR very carefully. We have lots of people knocking on the commercial team’s doors every day and say they want to partner with us and have their logo on our car.
“We are in a very fortuitous position, where we don’t just partner with anybody and we want to partner with the best and we have our innovation partners of which Hexagon is one of them.
“We have a long-standing relationship with Hexagon and there is a reason we partner with them, because they are the best in their field and their knowledge, expertise and equipment is top-notch.
"It is equipment we are using every single day to find the best performance in the car and to make sure we are compliant with the regulations and make sure our cars are as they should be. Without Hexagon we couldn’t go racing."
