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Powerless F1 drivers frustrated by Bahrain F1 software glitch

201 points · 169 comments · llm_nerd

  1. aetherspawn · · focus · HN ↗
    Auto software engineer here.

    It’s frankly because Motorsport software guys are pretty arrogant. They look down on road car and truck engineers, but reality is they develop stuff with virtually no processes and they usually have only very basic engineering skills, yet every day they are told Motorsport is at the forefront of technology.

    “Motorsport grade” auto components usually means crappy, and everything requires a software patch or constant maintenance to work correctly.

    Not surprised there was a bug, and not surprised they were able to develop and deploy a patch in 1 hour without V&V testing it or anything.

    1. buriram · · focus · HN ↗
      Similar HFT and quants, they are elite in a very specialized niche: aerodynamics and CFD. The rest is extremely outdated.

      Keep in mind that when James Volwes become the team principal of Williams in 2023, he was horrified to realize Williams operated everything in Excel spreadsheet, and to track the progress of how parts are made, they emailed Excel spreadsheet to each other (and remember, we are talking about a car with 100k parts). And the first thing he did was to onboard Atlassian / Jira and redesigned the process of communication / car production from the basics.

      1. stevage · · focus · HN ↗
        I have a friend who has worked in aerodynamics at several of the F1 teams. The parts themselves are pretty high tech, but all of the management of the data, the processes, the software to produce them etc is pretty shoddy.
      2. gpderetta · · focus · HN ↗
        > And the first thing he did was to onboard Atlassian / Jira and redesigned the process of communication / car production from the basics.

        Ah, that explains the incredible results Williams has had since then!

        1. lbreakjai · · focus · HN ↗
          But now they can have beautiful Gantt charts to visualize exactly how far they are from the top.
        2. snicky · · focus · HN ↗
          Now they also have 100k different ways to organize the data.
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