SAP previously had a long involvement with McLaren that ran between 1997-2020 and saw the company involved in F1 world championship titles for Mika Hakkinen in 1998 and 1999, and Lewis Hamilton in 2008.
The company was also a supporter of the now defunct Mercedes Formula E outfit, in an arrangement that began in 2018.
While it hasn’t had a commercial deal, the Mercedes F1 team has been an SAP customer for some time. However the new partnership will give the Brackley outfit access to innovations that will in effect be proof tested before they gain wider use.
Mercedes said SAP will contribute to improving operational efficiency, especially in the context of the cost cap and the extra layers of complexity that the FIA financial regulations have added to running an F1 team.
The team will use SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, which will help it “to explore how artificial intelligence, and cloud solutions from SAP can inform and predict decisions, optimise resources, and future-proof their IT infrastructure”.
With regard to the specific challenges of the cost cap SAP’s AI capabilities will allow the team to “forecast costs, predict the final budget needs, and optimise both the supply chain and stocked items accordingly”.
Source: Autosport