McLaren Racing's Dan Keyworth on how data drives F1 in 2026

Last year was a big year for McLaren Racing, as the team won its second consecutive Constructors' Championship and tenth overall. British driver Lando Norris won his first driver's title, while Oscar Piastri finished third.

With the new F1 season looming, the team will be aiming to repeat their recent successes.

ITPro sat down with Dan Keyworth, executive director of performance technology and systems at McLaren Racing, on site at the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) in Woking.

This is the headquarters of the McLaren Group, including its racing and automotive businesses, a Norman Foster-designed campus that houses some of the team’s most famous race-winning cars. Against this historic backdrop, Keyworth reflects on the pace of change in Formula 1 and says the influence of technology and data continues to increase.

“Even in the last decade, the trend is almost parabolic,” he says, referring to the steep and rapid acceleration in the use of technology in the sport. “Every year, there's more data that we can digest and gain insight from.”

Keyworth says the modern F1 car includes about 300 sensors that capture information from practice and race-day sessions. The aim is to ensure the technologists and data professionals in his team are dialed into these insights and looking for signs of a potential competitive advantage.

“That work might include correlating those insights with data from computational fluid dynamics, the wind tunnel, and the driver simulator,” he says. “These are all indicators of performance that you want to make sure you recognize at the track.”

The challenge for McLaren is arguably greater this year than ever before, with a raft of new rules and regulations covering power units, chassis, tyres, and fuel creating a step change in the sport.

The good news is that McLaren team principal Andrea Stella recognizes the scale of the challenge and the role technology will play in helping McLaren to maintain its advantage. To that end, Keyworth was recently promoted to his current position, having formerly held the role of director of business technology.

“That change is something that’s naturally been happening over the last couple of years, which is just the convergence of technology in all areas, across engineering, production, and the race team. You've got to evolve in this sport. You stand still; you’re going backwards,” he says.

“What's clear to us as a team is that technology is another battleground in the sport. Ultimately, we're designing the car, building it, and then going racing. We've got 1,200 people here at Woking doing the first two things, and we need the best technology and systems to drive performance into the car and give the guys at the track the best possible product.”

Data analytics has revolutionized McLaren

Having spent nine years with technology specialist Fujitsu, Keyworth joined McLaren in September 2017. He lives locally and was a fan of Mika Häkkinen driving for the team as a child. Now approaching a decade with McLaren, Keyworth describes the role of overseeing technology as a privilege.

“It's a very historic brand, which comes with pressure, because it's 60 years of huge success, particularly in the last two years,” he says. “But that pressure is also the thing that energizes me. I'm quite a stable person, quite calm. So, I like the pressure cooker of Formula One. And I like the intersection between the sport and my interest in technology.”

While the team can bask in the glow of its recent successes, Keyworth recognizes there have been harder times along the road to victory. When he joined, the team was struggling at the back of the grid. Technology has played a crucial role in supporting progress on and off the track.

“I worked with the commercial team to bring in some great technology partners, such as Google, Dell Technologies, and Cisco. Some of those relationships are now very long-standing. These partnerships are not just about putting a sticker on the car for a couple of years. This work is about longevity,” he says.

“The other achievement is getting our technology genuinely focused on lap time and performance. There's been a huge amount of support from the board and from our leadership team. We put investment into our tools and infrastructure, which has given us an on-track advantage.”

One of the team’s key technology partners is IT service management (ITSM) specialist Freshworks. Keyworth describes ITSM as the stable technology layer that supports the team. “It’s the beating heart,” he says. “If you lose any IT during the race, we’re completely out of business, so it's a critical component.”

Keyworth says the lightweight nature of Freshworks’ technology means the team can make ITSM changes as circumstances demand. That capability is critical given the fast-paced nature of F1 and the raft of new rules and regulations.

“An F1 team doesn’t run like a traditional business,” he says. “You've got to have flexibility. Freshworks has been a good advocate of moving fast and being adaptable, and that's the DNA of our team. Everything we do is supported by technology, and it must roll at the same pace as our organization.”

This season’s new regulations mean the changes are coming more quickly and in greater numbers than usual. While the rules are a big shift for the team’s drivers on the track, Keyworth recognizes that the modifications also create new demands for people off the track.

“Like any change, good preparation means good execution,” he says. “This team's awesome. We've all rolled up our sleeves and embraced the new regulations, rather than felt defeated by them. It's been good to see our culture challenged by the change, and I'd say we're stronger than ever.”

It’s not just regulatory changes that present a challenge to Keyworth. While digital leaders in F1 tend to avoid bleeding-edge developments in favor of tried-and-tested technologies, he recognizes the need to keep an eye on AI through partners such as Google Gemini and Freshworks.

“There’s the ability to make processes more optimal by pairing AI with traditional machine learning and asking natural language questions, like, ‘Show me the best lap between Lando and Oscar in a practice session per sector,’ and suddenly there's a graph in front of you,” he says.

“Through our partnership with Freshworks, we've been using Freddy AI, which is an overlay into our service management processes for things like grouping tickets and spotting problems. A lot of this work was quite manual in the past. That overlay of intelligence means our people can focus on fixing problems.”