How TeamViewer helps Mercedes F1 simulators stay fast, flexible and fully remote

Formula One is a sport whereby the margins of glory are separated not by minutes but milliseconds. In all this speed and the speed of engineering precision, the tiniest digital advantage can determine if a Formula-one team makes the podium or if it simply gets lost in the midfield. That is why the Mercedes-AMG-PETRONAS Formula One Team is investing in more than just horse power carbon fibre—when it optimizes its tech stack, TeamViewer Tensor (TM) is allowed to integrate where it can subtly affect events in the garage.

Racing Meets Remote Access

Key to F1 prep is the driver in loop simulator, an advanced system that allows the car, the human being, and the team, albeit in a controlled digital fashion, to emulate some of the subtleties required of modern racing. Similarly, this is where drivers, like George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, tackle the different configurations of the car, the complexities of new circuits, and create a better feel for their instincts leading up to a race weekend.

However, on the other side of the beautifully designed simulator rigs and digital dashboards is a massive underpinning of technology infrastructure. That is where Tensor from TeamViewer comes in—the enterprise-grade remote connectivity solution from TeamViewer.

The very nature of the global F1 calendar operates across numerous time zones. Combine this with the fact that the race team does not always operate from their Brackley base, Tensor enables engineers and all support staff to securely access and control measurement and driver simulator systems immediately from anywhere in the world.

“This remote access isn’t just about convenience—it’s critical,” says Christian Damm, Simulator Development Engineer at Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS. “What we do in the simulator directly impacts on-track performance. If engineers or drivers need access in real time, we can’t afford lag, downtime, or security risks.”

A Secure, Scalable Pit Crew for IT

One of the lesser thought about aspects of running a high-performance simulator is how access is provided as well as how secure that access is. Tensor has the ability to centralize controls and group users which allows Damm's team to manage and grant access to the engineers and drivers very quickly if they ever needed to grant or remove access without compromising the integrity of their system.

For Damm, whose job often requires collaboration with others, one of the features he found outstanding was Tensor's dynamic remoting feature: "This means, I can now have multiple users log into one machine to work together to troubleshoot, and efficiently emulate my complex desk setup—even with my laptop from remote locations."

Security shouldn't come as a surprise. Simulator data is sensitive; for instance, aerodynamics data and tyre performance data. Of utmost importance is that the encrypted access and data integrity are intact. Peace of mind from a remote capability yet enterprise-like security. 

Better Tech = Faster Cars

Although lambda data and revved up engines during F1 broadcasts make for an appealing show, true competitive advantage is found within a team’s backend systems. The end-user experience and reliability with Tensor of being able to stream high resolution without the lags and dropouts with other tools, has been vastly improved. Implicably, the potential improvement to car set-up accuracy is significant too.

"Previously, the system would stutter and freeze. With our higher quality bit rate and colour tunings, our engineers have the clarity that they can rely on and obtain in an instant," said Damm.

However, it is still not just clearer visuals the team now have. In a hyper-evolutionised modern day Formula 1 with cost caps, the team must evaluate every investment to now have to do more than one job. "We value-adding for every upgrade and look as always at the impact an upgrade is going to have," says Steven Riley, Head of IT Operations and Service Management for the team. "Does the upgrade help encourage us to go faster, resolve problems faster, support us to make better decisions faster? Tensor ticks all those boxes."

Beyond the Racetrack

TeamViewer's partnership with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team highlights a bigger shift: the overlap of high-performance motorsport with new digital technology that embraces the value and power of real-time data requests. As simulators become more intrinsic to the development of performance strategy, a tool like Tensor has a growing role to provide real-time data responsiveness for teams' newly gained dexterity—not only to develop a race car for the grid, but to pick AI-generated recommendations for optimum performance.

For TeamViewer, which started in 2005 as a remote desktop access application, this partnership shows how it has evolved into a full-scale digital workplace enabler. TeamViewer currently has a customer base of over 660,000 worldwide in the deployment of digital workplaces for everything in the spectrum of IT support, industrial device management, and augmented reality workflow.

Because of AI development, the hybrid work model, and the addition of tech integration into all industry sectors, TeamViewer's continued expansion in the future is very much on the agenda—and its presence in such impact-driven, fast-paced scenes as Formula 1 within high-performance motorsport, is a good example of how far remote technology can go in terms of rapidly accessing data when milliseconds matter.