Interview: Fabrizio Pilotti, CIO, Aston Martin Formula One

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<p>In a boardroom at his company’s technology campus near the Silverstone Circuit, Fabrizio Pilotti, <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/365531373/CIO-interview-Clare-Lansley-CIO-Aston-Martin-Formula-One">CIO at Aston Martin Aramco Formula One</a>, reflects on what it’s like being the digital leader of a world-famous motor racing team: “It’s lots of work.”</p> <p>Computer Weekly spoke exclusively to Pilotti in the build-up to the recent British Grand Prix. He arrived at the Aston Martin Racing (AMR) Technology Campus before seven o’clock in the morning and will leave late in the evening after a business dinner. As the executive responsible for the team’s underlying IT, he has multiple responsibilities across the business.</p> <p>“It’s a mixture, depending on the focus,” he says. “You’re here at the Silverstone Grand Prix, which is obviously a big event. But then there’s everything else related to the IT for the team. There’s the management of the infrastructure, the track-side part, and the human management element.”</p> <p>Formerly CIO at <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366635192/Mercedes-AMG-Petronas-F1-revs-up-testing-with-augmented-reality">Mercedes AMG</a> High Performance Powertrains, the company responsible for the design, manufacture and testing of Mercedes’ F1 hybrid power units, Pilotti assumed his current position in July 2025. Before his time in F1, Pilotti worked in finance at Deutsche Bank and Daimler Financial Services. More than a decade in motor racing has helped illustrate the differences between digital leadership in this sector and other industries.</p> <p>“It’s the speed – at times, it feels like you’re in a tumble dryer,” he says. “There are lots of things going on at the same time in different areas, and you need the same high level of attention to detail for everything. You don’t have one area where your brain is not in top gear. Whatever you’re dealing with, you always have to be on top of your game, and it’s very intense in comparison to other jobs, where you have more time to step back.”</p> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Disappearing from view"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Disappearing from view</h2> <p>While the work is intense, Pilotti says he loves working in F1. In fact, much of the enjoyment comes from the high-pressure nature of motor racing.</p> <p>“The reward part is amazing because it’s so intense,” he says. “Compared to other businesses, you see your results quickly. Other enterprises tend to focus on returns on investment or improvements in sales figures. Now that’s not a negative, but this sport is about delivering something on a different level.”</p> <p>Computer Weekly visited the AMR Technology Campus during the British GP sprint qualifying. The campus was a hive of activity, with people working in the facility and at the track to help the team’s drivers boost their performance. During our conversation, Pilotti outlines some key achievements in his first year as CIO.</p> <blockquote> <div class="imagecaption alignLeft"> <img src="https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/computerweekly/Fabrizio-Pilotti-AstonMartinF1-PR-140x180px.jpg" alt="Photo of Fabrizio Pilotti, CIO at Aston Martin Aramco Formula One"> </div> <p><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><strong><span style="color: #34495e;">“[In motorsport], there are lots of things going on at the same time in different areas, and you need the same high level of attention to detail for everything. You don’t have one area where your brain is not in top gear”</span></strong></span></p> <p><em><span style="color: #34495e;">Fabrizio Pilotti, Aston Martin Aramco Formula One</span></em></p> </blockquote> <p>“We’ve done a couple of things at the cutting edge in terms of the way we do [race] simulation. We can also be very proud of the preparation and all the work we’re doing for the future of our cars. I’ve made some significant changes to the track-side setup that I’m also very proud of,” he says.</p> <p>“I have the objective of making IT a seamless operation. I’m happy in situations where more IT is disappearing, not in a physical sense, but disappearing from perception, and digital is starting to be more pervasive, but not perceived. In fact, I took a similar journey at my previous employer.”</p> <p>Rather than directly impacting the performance of the team’s cars, Pilotti says the underlying digitisation comes via the specialist tools he gives to the team’s staff at the campus and at trackside: “We are giving our professionals more and more tools to understand the car and the engine so they, in turn, can understand the performance.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Embracing data-enabled change"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Embracing data-enabled change</h2> <p>Pilotti says this in-depth understanding of performance takes place through an iterative process. Each day, the IT professionals in his department interact with other people in the organisation, including the drivers, to explore potential improvements.</p> <p>“You have the car at the beginning of the season – its design, suspension, and so on – and then the driver drives the car,” he says.</p> <p>“And in talking to the drivers and the engineers, you need to understand the car, and the speed of response is the key to making things work. The process is about learning, for example, how much you need to move the front wing a small amount in a certain way.”</p> <p>Pilotti says any attempts to improve performance require a mix of quantitative and qualitative data, <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/How-Oracle-Red-Bull-Racing-is-driving-Formula-1-into-the-future-with-cloud-AI-and-data">analysing information feeds from the car</a> and talking with drivers and engineers.</p> <p>“This work requires an enormous amount of insight,” he says, before explaining how artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly forms a key element of activities in an F1 team.</p> <p>“We started with machine learning way earlier than the rest of the world,” he says. “Now, the use of agentic AI is ramping up in the sport.”</p> <p>At Aston Martin F1, Pilotti says one of the main applications of agents, as with other digital leaders running IT in other sectors, is in software development. He says the team is also exploring how AI can <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366630090/Mercedes-AMG-Petronas-F1-team-chooses-SAP-Cloud-ERP-to-gain-edge">help optimise processes, including for enterprise resource planning (ERP)</a>.</p> <p>What’s crucial to understand, as Computer Weekly has learned during its interviews with other motor sport digital leaders, such as <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366645733/Interview-Dan-Cherowbrier-CTO-Formula-E">Dan Cherowbrier, chief technology officer at Formula E</a>, is that innovation can come from unexpected places. While the vehicles in the sport produce huge amounts of data, performance improvements aren’t just about exploiting the latest and greatest emerging technologies, explains Pilotti.</p> <p>“There’s also lots of handcraft in F1, such as when you go in a garage or when you go downstairs in the factory, you see how much the human is in the loop because of the details,” he says.</p> <p>“In 10 years, that process may be different. But the sport that I’ve been honoured to work in during the last few years is where I perceive the human in the loop as an enormous element.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Searching for marginal gains"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Searching for marginal gains</h2> <p>Pilotti says it’s tough to get a full sense of F1 operations by spending a day watching the organisation work.</p> <p>“The real journey would be to spend one week with a team,” he says. “You would come out and say, ‘That’s completely different to how I expected’.”</p> <p>During a tour of the campus, Computer Weekly witnessed this handcraft first hand, including seeing world-renowned aerodynamicist and Aston Martin F1’s managing technical partner, Adrian Newey, drafting designs in his office. Pilotti says this level of attention to detail will help the team to climb the standings.</p> <p>“This is a marginal gains business, and that’s an element that can’t be appreciated on TV,” he says.</p> <p>“You have to think about the approach as something like the Renaissance, where there was this group of people handcrafting statues, and they would work day and night on small details. That approach is more similar to Formula One than the common expectation that most people have of computers being everywhere.”</p> <div class="extra-info"> <div class="extra-info-inner"> <h3 class="splash-heading">Read more about technology in Formula One</h3> <ul class="default-list"> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366627156/Interview-Steve-Riley-head-of-IT-operations-and-service-management-Mercedes-AMG-Petronas-F1">Interview with Steve Riley, head of IT operations and service management, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1</a>: As the British Grand Prix rolled into Silverstone for the annual jamboree of Formula One motor racing, we caught up with the Mercedes F1 team to find out how technology has advanced in the year since the last race.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366593344/How-the-Mercedes-F1-IT-team-helped-Lewis-Hamilton-win-the-British-Grand-Prix">How the Mercedes F1 IT team helped Lewis Hamilton win the British Grand Prix</a>: Computer Weekly went behind the scenes with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One team, during its victorious British Grand Prix weekend, to find out about the role of IT in beating the stopwatch.</li> <li><a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/The-need-for-speed-How-AI-is-driving-faster-cars-for-VCARB-Formula-One-team">The need for speed: How AI is driving faster cars for VCARB Formula One team</a>: We go behind the scenes with the Visa Cash App RB F1 team to find out how data, AI and ERP are helping to deliver the millisecond improvements in lap time that make all the difference in Grand Prix racing.</li> </ul> </div> </div> <p>Computer Weekly visited the AMR Technology Campus during the team’s first Technology Forum, where executives from the team’s partners, including CoreWeave, Zscaler, Cohere, ServiceNow, Cognizant, Cognition, NetApp, Xerox, Arm and Eight Sleep, participated in panel discussions and roundtables focused on the evolving role of technology in elite sport.</p> <p>Priority projects for Pilotti and his IT department right now include an end-to-end focus on the enterprise application stack and the development of track-side systems. The key focus is subtle, continual changes that lead to optimisation.</p> <p>“It’s about creating the infrastructure so that you can do better, develop a learning loop, and work at speed,” he says.</p> <p>Any innovations will help Aston Martin F1 climb the standings, which will be crucial given the team’s tough start to the 2026 season. Pilotti says hard work now will help boost on-track performance in the future.</p> <p>“I can tell you, being first, second, or last, I’ve done them all,” he says. “It’s a lot of work, whatever position you’re in. It’s always a learning process.”</p> </section> <section class="section main-article-chapter" data-menu-title="Leading from the front"> <h2 class="section-title"><i class="icon" data-icon="1"></i>Leading from the front</h2> <p>Two years from now, Pilotti expects his department’s focus on technology and data-led relationships to help the team’s drivers move up the grid.</p> <p>“For sure, end-to-end processes and the quality of data will be there; track-side management will be there; and the speed that we transform the idea from our chief designers to the track,” he says. “Success is about how you aggregate the data and make it available.”</p> <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> My success happened because I always loved my job, I never gave up, and I always tried my best. But I think my career is a byproduct. I didn’t aim for the career – the career happened </figure> <figcaption> <strong>Fabrizio Pilotti, Aston Martin Aramco Formula One</strong> </figcaption> <i class="icon" data-icon="z"></i> </div> </blockquote> <p>After more than 10 seasons at Mercedes and a year with Aston Martin F1, Pilotti reflects on his motor racing digital leadership career. He says success is due to his determination. Having always focused on delivering the best possible results, he began to climb the career ladder, which was something he hadn’t necessarily anticipated.</p> <p>“My success happened because I always loved my job, I never gave up, and I always tried my best,” he says.</p> <p>“But I think my career is a byproduct. I didn’t aim for the career – the career happened. I wasn’t thinking, ‘I want to be a CIO or an executive.’ I found myself getting more accountability because I was taking more accountability.”</p> <p>Now, as someone who sits at the top of the IT leadership hierarchy, Pilotti says technology is crucial to everyday business operations. So much so, in fact, that he questions whether the CIO will exist as a separate role in the longer term. While IT will always play a role in successful enterprises, its leadership is likely to become embedded in the business.</p> <p>“I think IT will unleash across the organisation; lots of parts will be automated, and it will be a completely different approach,” he says.</p> <p>“It will be more embedded and less like a separate function. You could describe this shift as a transformation. Society was without IT 30 years ago, and maybe in 20 years, IT will be everywhere, rather than separate.”</p> </section>