As is the case for so many industries in recent years, Formula 1 has been transformed by data. Each team designs and tests its cars in silico, with vast server farms competing with on-site wind tunnels to see which can use more electricity. Up to 300 sensors per car constantly measure every parameter, beaming that info back to the garage—and in turn to home base—each lap. It’s a far cry from the garagiste days of drawing boards and pens, or even the active suspension era and its rugged 286 laptops. It’s a highly competitive sport, for the financial rewards for success are many, and so that data represents a gold mine for each team.

Under CIO Greame Hackland, Williams Martini Racing provides an illustrating example of how an F1 team can use that data, and the steps it has to take to protect it. And while some of the challenges are unique to Formula 1, many of them might be familiar to anyone working in a large IP-heavy organization.

“When I joined Williams in 2014, 70 percent of our race strategists’ time was spent getting data and putting it into spreadsheets, whether that was at the track or back at the factory,” Hackland told Ars. To help find a way around this, the team started working with Avanade (a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture), which brought fresh viewpoints to bear on old problems. “The last year and half has been a huge transformation. We can’t allow an engineer who’s been in F1 for 25 years to dictate how the tools we use look,” Hackland told us.