Tata Communications reveal second 2015 F1 Connectivity Innovation Prize winners

Tata Communications, the Official Connectivity Provider to Formula 1®, has unveiled the winners of the second and final challenge of the 2015 F1® Connectivity Innovation Prize, which aimed to show how fans can be engaged at the very heart of the sport. The challenge was to design a prediction tool that asks F1 followers to forecast how each Grand Prix will unfold, and enables Formula One Management to rank the predictions and reward the fans that forecast the most accurate outcomes.

John Morrison, Chief Technical Officer of Formula One Management, says: “In F1 racing success is often determined by the teams’ ability to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, with predictive and real-time analytics playing a growing role in the sport. We found the entries very interesting and they demonstrate the huge potential for harnessing data to take fan engagement in F1 racing to the next level.”

Winning entry 1: team entrants Uros Strel Lencic and Andrew Fox, UK Idea: The F1 Prediction Application would use a simple drag-and-drop interface to enable fans to tap into track and weather data and practice results to predict the outcome of each Grand Prix for each driver, including their pit stop strategies and tyre types. Whilst the race is in progress, fans could monitor their predictions against the action unfolding on the track in real-time. The F1 Prediction Application would enable Formula One Management to score and rank fans’ predictions after each Grand Prix.

Winning entry 2: team entrants Sandrine Partridge and John A Vasilakos, US Idea: The Formula 1 Virtual Championship (F1VC) application would harness predictive analysis and gamification to boost fan engagement in F1racing. It would allow fans to access, actively analyse and apply customised predictive forecasts against other fans in a virtual championship. The F1VC would have four levels for different fan types - Fan, Enthusiast, Aficionado and Expert - maximising opportunities to engage with different fans. The level would determine the number of variables the player would need to predict, i.e. a Fan would need to choose top 10 drivers for a race only, whereas an Expert would need to predict the top 10 for qualifying, and predict how many places each driver will move during the race, as well as their the pit-stop and tyre strategies. Players would score points for accuracy. The F1VC would assess and score the predictions of each player and rank them accordingly.

Winning entry 3: team entrants Giovanni Tomasell, Anthony Sapountzis and Andrew Romeo, Australia Idea: The Prixdictor App would bring fans closer to the action by allowing them to choose a team and driver to manage and determine their race strategies. The app would give fans access to all practice data, weather conditions, race track history, current championship standings and race results to guide their forecasts throughout the Grand Prix weekend. Fans would be awarded points throughout the race for their predictions and ranked accordingly. The winner would be the fan with the highest total points for a race. Prizes could be awarded for each race to build excitement around the Prixdictor App.

Mehul Kapadia, Managing Director of F1 Business at Tata Communications, says: “With each race more nail-biting than the last as the battle for the Championship continues, this challenge reflects fans’ hunger to be part of the action and engage with other F1 enthusiasts as the drama unfolds. The winning entries demonstrate how innovative uses of technology can make each Grand Prix more immersive for fans, allowing them to experience first-hand the excitement of Formula One.”

The Grand Prize of the F1 Connectivity Innovation Prize is a cheque for $50,000 and a bespoke trophy, to be presented to the winner at the end of the season in November. The five runners-up of both challenges will be awarded VIP trips to the final round of the 2015 FIA Formula One World Championship, the 2015 Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Tata Communications is the Official Connectivity Provider of Formula 1, enabling the sport to seamlessly reach its tens of millions of fans across the globe.