Every Formula 1 race starts long before lights out
Lessons in High-Performance IT from McLaren and Freshworks
Before the cars line up on the grid, McLaren’s technology teams are already racing; rebuilding garages from empty shells, running kilometres of cabling, and lighting up mission-critical systems that simply have to work. In a sport where milliseconds decide podiums, performance off the track matters just as much as performance on it. This is the point where most enterprise IT environments would struggle.
Across a 24-race global season, that pressure never eases. Fresh from back-to-back Constructors’ Championships in 2024 and 2025, McLaren’s return to the top of Formula 1 hasn’t just been driven by world-class drivers and engineering, it’s been enabled by technology that performs flat-out, week after week.
That’s where Freshworks comes in.
Technology: Formula 1’s Fourth Battleground
“Technology is considered a strategic pillar of the organization,” says Dan Keyworth, Director of Business Technology at McLaren Racing. “If you look at the sport, you’ve got technical, financial, and sporting regulations. For me, the fourth battleground between the teams is technology.”
That battleground has only intensified under Formula 1’s cost cap. Teams can’t simply spend more, they have to operate smarter, faster, and more efficiently. With just two trackside IT staff supporting race-day operations, McLaren needed IT service management that delivered reliability without complexity. There’s no room for fragile processes or bloated tools when the garage needs to come alive on demand.
Why McLaren Chose Freshservice
McLaren selected Freshservice to bring clarity, consistency, and accountability to one of the most demanding IT environments in sport.
Freshservice now underpins several critical workflows, including:
- Race-weekend operational checks
Recurring checks ensure every monitor, microphone, data link, and system is verified before lights out with nothing left to memory or chance. - Employee onboarding and offboarding
Structured workflows support a growing, fast-moving organisation, with plans to deepen automation through integrations like Workday. - Cross-team visibility
Engineering, aerodynamics, and operations teams can track requests and coordinate responses in real time, which is essential when decisions are made at speed.
“Freshservice is super focused on delivering uncomplicated IT services,” says Keyworth. “It has to be frictionless, people need to enjoy consuming IT services, and it just has to work.”
Automation, AI, and Removing Friction
For McLaren, technology success isn’t about adding more tools, it’s about removing friction.
By using automation and AI across IT service management, the team is reducing repetitive work and freeing people up to focus on higher-value activity. The lesson is simple: when IT gets out of the way, teams move faster and make better decisions under pressure. It’s an approach that reflects a wider shift in IT’s role: from back-office support function to competitive advantage.
A Partnership Built for Performance
Freshworks isn’t just a supplier to McLaren, it’s a partner aligned with a performance-first mindset.
“We need to see a tangible link to on-track performance,” says Keyworth. “For every pound we spend on the car, we spend a pound on technology.”
That philosophy demands technology that scales, adapts, and holds up under extreme conditions. With Freshservice, McLaren has built an ITSM foundation designed for pressure, pace, and precision, the same qualities required to win championships.
Taking the Lessons to Spark
As Headline Sponsor of Spark26, Freshworks is taking pole position with a keynote exploring how the McLaren Formula 1 Team and top IT teams strip out complexity and operate at race pace.
Want the full story before Spark? Dive into the McLaren Formula 1 case study and see how Freshworks keeps performance running flat-out when every millisecond matters.
