Built on Arm: Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team’s CoreWeave Wind Tunnel

In Formula One™, the difference between finishing on a podium and falling behind can come down to a detail as small as a revised winglet or a sharper diffuser edge. However, getting these details right, from design concept to competitive upgrades, depends on one thing above all: speed – not just on the circuit but across the entire development cycle.

For the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team, the focus is always on the next race, and gaining a competitive edge, no matter how small. So, when the team set out to build its wind tunnel – a controlled environment used to simulate how air flows over a car – the goal was to turn data into aerodynamics and downforce faster than the competition. That demanded a new kind of compute platform, one that delivers scalable intelligence at the edge, inside a tightly regulated, high-pressure development loop.

With nearly every global automotive OEM today relying on Arm technology as the foundational compute platform, we are the natural partner to help realize that vision. As Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team’s official AI compute platform provider, Arm is enabling a faster path from concept to trackside performance.

Building speed into every detail

By regulation, all Formula One™ wind tunnel models must be no larger than 60% of the actual car. Inside that scale model, Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team has packed advanced sensing technology and compute systems to capture more detailed aerodynamic data with greater accuracy.

However, greater fidelity introduces complexity, with over a thousand miniature sensors being packed into the body – all functioning within strict power and thermal budgets. Each session in the wind tunnel is also time-limited and high-stakes, where a single faulty sensor can invalidate an entire run.

To make sense of the large volume of data generated, the team uses Arm-powered compute at the edge to filter and process signals in real-time. This gives engineers faster access to cleaner insights, so they can focus on identifying development paths that lead to real performance on the track sooner.

“In Formula One™, everything we do is driven by data. From an engineering perspective, our decisions rely on having the right information at the right time. The faster we can access and understand that data, the faster we can move, and that’s where this system makes a real difference.” – Charlie Blackwell, Head of Electronics, at Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team.

Delivering edge intelligence in the wind tunnel

At the heart of Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team’s infrastructure is the CoreWeave wind tunnel, a high-performance system built on the Arm compute platform. It begins at the sensor level, where embedded Arm microcontrollers provide accurate, energy-efficient signal acquisition.

To ensure engineers are working with clean, usable insights, the data is processed in real time at the edge – organizing, filtering, and flagging any inconsistencies before results are validated in the cloud. This helps protect the integrity of each session and enables faster feedback into the development process.

From there, selected data flows to the cloud, where it is validated against computational fluid dynamic simulations and correlated with telemetry from the track. The result is a continuous, synchronized loop that empowers engineers to validate concepts and refine upgrades with speed and confidence.

According to Charlie, “The CoreWeave Wind Tunnel plays a critical role in how we develop the car. Accuracy is everything in Formula One™, every single detail matters, so we need to get the right tools and the right sensors.”

To support large-scale validation and simulation, Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team relies on high-performance infrastructure provided by CoreWeave, the team’s official AI Cloud Computing Partner. This backend complements the real-time processing happening at the edge, ensuring that insights gathered in the tunnel can be rapidly confirmed, compared with digital models, and aligned with real-world performance data from the Formula One™ car.

Turning tunnel time into trackside gains

With Arm-powered edge AI inference and real-time processing in place, Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team extracts more value from every minute of time spent in the wind tunnel. Each session delivers insights with higher confidence and fewer disruptions, which then translates into earlier upgrade validation, smarter development calls, and a faster cycle from concept to competition.

As Charlie says, “Having Arm as a partner gives us access to a broader ecosystem and the technical expertise to make smart choices, whether that’s around sensors, compute performance, or the best-fit technology for each part of our system. ”

The Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team brings deep technical intuition to every test session and then at race weekend. With Arm providing the foundational technology for the wind tunnel’s compute system, that instinct is now backed by clearer, more reliable data. Engineers can interrogate results more directly, validate performance, and focus on refining the most promising development paths. This ensures that when an upgrade reaches the track, it performs as intended.

Scaling intelligence across the automotive industry

The partnership between Arm and the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team reflects a broader shift happening across performance engineering. As the demands for faster development and greater accuracy converge, compute is becoming a critical enabler at every stage – from simulation environments to physical systems and vehicle platforms.

Whether it’s enabling real-time insight in the wind tunnel or powering the next-generation of AI-defined vehicles, the same foundational principles apply: efficient performance, flexible integration, and trusted scalability.

With our latest advancements in automotive compute, which includes Arm Zena CSS, we’re helping automakers accelerate development cycles and unlock new levels of capability – on and off the track. So, whether its wind tunnel testing or full-scale production, one thing is clear: the future of automotive is being built on Arm.