McLaren shows strong pace in F1 pre-season testing
McLaren demonstrated strong performance during pre-season testing, with Lando Norris posting fastest laps at Silverstone and the team debuting an AI-enhanced telemetry platform. An F1 analyst suggested the team's data infrastructure overhaul is enabling more aggressive race strategies. Meanwhile, reports from the Bahrain test highlighted Williams and Aston Martin as other teams showing notable early progress.
- McLaren's use of an analytics automation platform from partner Alteryx is central to processing the 1.5 TB of data generated each race weekend from 300 telemetry sensors on each car. This platform underpins analysis across design, manufacturing, and race operations, allowing the team to correlate virtual simulations with real-world track performance under the sport's strict budget caps. - The move to enterprise-level AI agents is shifting CTO responsibilities toward building new infrastructure for governance, vector databases, and multi-agent orchestration, as these systems move from copilots to autonomous workflows. Enterprises adopting such agentic systems report productivity gains of 30-50% and cost reductions up to 40% in targeted business areas. - Following the end of Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative in October 2025, the adtech landscape is adapting to the continued presence of third-party cookies in Chrome, though the industry's shift toward privacy-preserving solutions continues. Early tests of Sandbox APIs before its termination showed significant revenue drops for publishers, with some reporting a 30% loss for users without cookies. - In the UK programmatic advertising market, a key 2026 trend is a move away from platform dependency toward ownership, with agencies and buyers favoring white-label DSPs to gain full control over margins and data. This is coupled with a demand for more transparent, KPI-driven optimization to move beyond guesswork in media buying. - During the first pre-season test in Bahrain, McLaren tied with Williams for the highest lap count at 422 laps, indicating strong initial reliability for their new package. While Mercedes set the fastest single lap time, McLaren's focus on mileage and a balanced package kept both of its drivers within the top six on the timesheets. - Aston Martin's pre-season has been challenging, with the team completing the fewest laps (206) in the first Bahrain test and acknowledging they are behind schedule. Drivers have noted the car is not yet optimized, and the team is working to understand its new package after losing track time. - The London B2B SaaS ecosystem consists of over 8,500 companies, with more than 2,250 having secured a collective $52.2B in funding. While early 2026 has seen a significant drop in funding compared to the previous year, major verticals for investment in 2025 included AI-powered SaaS, Vertical SaaS, and Enterprise SaaS. - A notable recent CTO hire in the UK is Asha Kumar, who was appointed as Zurich UK's first Chief Technology Officer in October 2025 to accelerate the company's adoption of AI and modernize its technology platforms. In another key move, Alexander Matthey, former CTO at Adyen, was appointed CTO at local payments platform PPRO in February 2026 to lead its AI integration and tech innovation.
