As F1 evolves, AI will become part of racing

issued Monday, May 4, 2026 · 06:06 PM

[LONDON] The integration of artificial intelligence into Liberty Media-owned F1 and its 11 teams is evident on and off the track in an already highly technology-enabled sport.

According to research firm Ampere Analysis, eight new AI partnerships have been signed in the past six months alone.

Among them, nine-time F1 constructors’ champion Williams is partnering with AI company Anthropic for Claude models to support team management and race strategy.

“This is more than a sticker on a car or a sticker on a billboard,” Peter Kenyon, a consultant to Williams’ board, told Reuters. “We see this as one of our points of differentiation. How can this partner help us on our journey back to the top?”

Whereas F1 cars of old had a number of brands, mostly from tobacco companies, there are now many partnerships, mostly from AI and technology companies, who benefit from greater exposure while helping teams make sense of data sets.

“What Anthropic and our technology team are doing is understanding the opportunity and integrating it into our business so that we can demonstrate it for ourselves and for them and showcase their technology with the aim of bringing Williams back to the top,” Kenyon added. AI can be an important tool to help teams deal with new regulations and new cost cap rules, currently set at USD 215 million.

“Efficiency is one of the universal benefits of AI products and means natural synergy between teams and AI brands,” said Adam Lewis, senior analyst at Ampere Analysis.

According to intelligence platform Sponsor United, technology leads the top 10 spending categories for F1 teams, with estimated spend reaching US$769 million last season, up 41% year-on-year.

SponsorUnited reports that four of the top 15 new sponsorship investors are AI and machine learning brands, including $65 billion cloud infrastructure company Coreweave, which is partnering with Aston Martin’s F1 team.

For the 2025 season, total team sponsorships in single-seater motorsport reached US$2.54 billion, making it the second-highest sports asset after America’s National Football League, which achieved US$2.7 billion.

Helps track management, rules, and decisions

AI is revolutionizing the way it sifts through administrative tasks and interprets key rules within sporting and technical regulations, helping engineers make faster decisions in on-track situations that were not possible decades ago.

“So this has gone from kind of a basic AI to a more agentic approach where it’s actually providing us with decisions rather than just searching for something,” Jack Harrington, Red Bull’s head of group partnerships, told Reuters. The Red Bull team, raced by four-time champion Max Verstappen, has a partnership with $494 billion software company Oracle, embedding its technological reputation throughout the team.

“So the power of AI is really being leveraged as an enabler for our teams, allowing engineers to focus on their core responsibilities and improve their performance at their jobs,” Harrington added.

Tech companies such as Alphabet’s Google have also seen positives from their entry into the F1 arena.

“These blue-chip companies are using F1 as a launching pad and spotlight for their AI products and rebranding,” Lewis said, pointing to Google’s partnership with F1’s McLaren to move from Google Pixel to Google Gemini, a generative AI tool. F1, which returned to Miami after no races in April, is also embracing AI as an organization. Our partnership with Amazon Web Services uses generative AI on live television, and in 2024 we applied generative AI to the design of the Montreal Trophy created by British silversmiths.

“I think there’s a never-ending, unquenchable hunger in F1 for the latest technology,” Arthur Hu, Lenovo’s global chief information officer, told Reuters.

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

Hu said Lenovo is helping F1 enhance productivity, mobility and remote collaboration through Lenovo laptops and devices, including AI PCs, to support the conduct of races.

“F1 is in a sweet spot where it’s a very technical sport…and I think that just opens up new possibilities,” Hu said. Reuters