Nothing underlines the growing importance of AI in Formula 1 more than Aston Martin hosting a Technology Forum centred on it in the middle of its home British Grand Prix.

Aston Martin brought together 10 of its partners (CoreWeave, Zscaler, Cohere, ServiceNow, Cognizant, Cognition, NetApp, Xerox, Arm and Eight Sleep) at its Silverstone-based factory on Friday to highlight how its F1 team is trying to utilise AI to aid its performance on and off the track.

Aston Martin has invested many millions into a new technology campus, complete with a state-of-the-art simulator and windtunnel. Using AI to process the data they produce has been key since they became operational in 2024 and 2025, respectively.

"Most people think of AI as pattern recognition combined with an internet search," Aston Martin team boss Adrian Newey explained ahead of the forum.

"What we're doing is using AI and machine learning in very specialised roles that don't rely on the internet at all.

"We're feeding in our own data - windtunnel, CFD, track - and using AI to spot patterns, correlations and trends that a human might not see quickly enough.

"It helps us make better decisions about how to develop the car."

Right now, Newey admits that giving the AI "intuition" remains the hardest challenge, but that's the "frontier we're working on."

That doesn't mean Aston Martin is replacing humans with AI, but it's crucial to helping its efficiency with so many moving parts.

"In technology, you talk about AI in terms of with AI, we can outsource intelligence [but] we can't outsource the experience," Aston Martin's commercial technology ambassador Eric Ernst explained.

"The experience is still with the team, the people. The AI helps us to give that team the cognitive scalability to perform a lot more than what would have needed two or three people [without AI]."

As you'd expect, much like car development, there's a certain level of secrecy about how exactly the AI technology is being applied to Aston Martin's F1 team.

But we have learned some figures...

• Prior to a race weekend, anywhere between 10,000–100,000 race scenarios are simulated to determine the probability of a result based on different strategies, via American data infrastructure partner NetApp.
• 50 billion sensor data points are captured per car per race weekend. Those all need processing and storing.
• Aston Martin transfers around 1.5TB back and forth with its Mission Control base in its Silverstone factory every race weekend, with only a 0.2 second delay (0.3s for the Australian GP).
• A typical F1 engine control unit (ECU) performs 43 trillion calculations every race.
• Aston Martin's control systems can have 4000–5000 set-up parameters being tweaked to get the car into the right window. AI is important for making the right decisions.

All of those factors potentially improve the performance of the car on track, but there's an off-track battle to get the drivers in the right window too...

'70% of the F1 grid uses it'

Eight Sleep is an American tech firm focused on 'sleep fitness', retailing a 'Pod' that sits like a cover on top of your mattress, tracks your sleep, and automatically adjusts the temperature.

Each side of the cover can be controlled independently so it will suit whoever is sleeping in the bed. The idea is you fall asleep faster, wake up less in the night and get better sleep.

There's also reported benefits for reducing snoring with AI detecting snoring and evaluating the top and/or bottom end of the pod to correct it.

Eight Sleep announced a new partnership with Aston Martin at the start of this year, having previously been a partner of Mercedes.

Ferrari F1 driver Charles Leclerc was also announced as an investor in Eight Sleep in February 2025.

According to Rafael Oliveira, vice president of international marketing & partnerships at Eight Sleep told The Race "over 70% of the grid uses our product".

He added: "We have investors in Formula 1. I think the people in Formula 1 truly see the benefit of the product, which is a great product kind of statement. 

"Then it made sense that this year we kind of took one step further to create an official partnership with one of the most exciting teams on the grid, with Aston."

Eight Sleep and Aston Martin say there's a 34% improvement in deep sleep with the product and 41% improvement in overall sleep quality - and word of mouth has been crucial to the product's prominence in F1 (and the wider world where it leads to 30% of global sales).

"In other sports, we call it the locker room effect. When an NFL player starts using it, they speak to their friends or their team-mates, and then in a matter of months, everyone is using [it]," Oliveira said.

"It's the same in Formula 1 and in most sports, where different athletes will try to find an edge, and when they do, they're vocal about it, and then it just kind of continues."

Such a gruelling F1 calendar means good sleep is essential for the drivers and team personnel.

"Where we focus the most is the recovery at home, where we all spend most of our time," Oliveira added.  

"If we're spending the majority of our time there, we should kind of focus on optimising that. And I think that's where the pod is at its best, because it knows you, you know the pod, and you just guarantee that consistent sort of quality night every single night.

"Now, when it comes to travel, it really depends on the location. In some or most locations, we try to have the pod available for the team, especially the drivers and so on. I would argue that in locations where the heat becomes a topic, such as in Silverstone, but in most of the European legs too, that's again where the product is at its best.

"The pod has many different features, but arguably the most loved one is the cooling. So when you have all of the heat outside, especially during the sessions, your body has a harder time to cool itself to fall asleep. 

"That's when we aid that cooling to accelerate the time to sleep, and also to allow everyone using it to maximise their time on deep sleep and REM sleep, which is what kind of unlocks that extra recovery and edge at the end of the day."