Behind the scenes with Red Bull Racing at the Miami Grand Prix
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Tua teaches race car drivers how to throw a spiral. Photo: Martin Vassolo/Axios
Martin here! I was invited by Oracle Red Bull Racing to tour their garage yesterday ahead of Sunday's race to play paparazzi among F1's biggest stars.
- I lifted an F1 tire, drank a Red Bull (of course) and stood in the pit lane as safety cars zoomed through their practice laps behind me.
What I saw: Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa swapping No. 1 jerseys with Red Bull's reigning F1 champion Max Verstappen and tossing footballs with Alfa Romeo's Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu.
- Red Bull engineers grooving to dance music inside their garage as they worked on the team's cars, featuring a special Miami color scheme this weekend.
- And a sleeveless Vin Diesel touring a rival team's garage.
What they're saying: I also chatted with Oracle Red Bull senior partnerships manager Jack Harrington about the team's use of artificial intelligence and cloud technology to gain an advantage on the track.
- Through its partnership with Oracle, the team can run 4 billion computer-generated simulations before every race to plan for any scenario on track.
- "If something happens, we've seen it in the simulations before and we know how to react," Harrington says. "Not only are we predicting our strategies, we're also predicting what our opponents will do."
Yes, but: The humans on the team are still making real-time decisions using information from the simulation, he says.
- "Ultimately, the final decision to this day is still made by a human being."