A dozen engineers in blue polo shirts emblazoned with the Alpine F1 Team logo glide across the garage at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, ready to race into the pit lane and change a smoking tire in two seconds flat.
Others puzzle over computer monitors installed in the center of the garage. They, along with 14 more sitting in a silent mission-control–like room in the paddock, are looking to minimize milliseconds as Alpine’s two drivers race around the track at 200 miles per hour. Formula 1’s open-wheel single-seaters emit more than a million data points per second to the cloud. From there, the information is routed to the team garages as well as to scores of support staff across the Atlantic.
