A bug in a widespread security system paralyzed Windows computers all over the world on Friday. The result was chaos at airports, in banks and in numerous other companies. Formula 1 was also directly affected by this IT chaos, or rather one team in particular: Mercedes.
The international computer problems were caused by a glitch at the cybersecurity company Crowdstrike. As a partner of Mercedes, the company is present at every race in the premier class. Accordingly, during FP1 at the Hungarian GP, numerous monitors on the pit wall and in the garage of the Silver Arrows also failed.
Mercedes partner is behind IT problem: consequences for the Formula 1 team?
Behind the scenes, a solution had to be worked on quickly to get the problem under control. “There was some work that we had to do. Because we have a lot of computers in our garage, as well as on the pit wall and a lot of other technical equipment here. All of these needed updates,” said Mercedes engineer Andrew Shovlin in the technical bosses’ press conference on Friday, explaining the difficulties for the F1 team.
Shovlin, however, was reassuring. According to him, the problem did not have a serious impact. “We had great support from all our partners,” he stressed. “We worked through it and the impact on FP1 was minimal, if not zero,” he said.
During the course of the morning, the IT company managed to find the cause of the problem and released an update that supposedly fixed the bug. The technical problem had previously crept into the systems through an update. Mercedes does not expect any further disruptions over the rest of the weekend. “It caused a bit of work, but we are back where we need to be,” Shovlin summed up.
For Crowdstrike itself, the problem probably has more serious consequences than for the Mercedes Formula 1 team. The company’s shares fell by almost 20 percent in the wake of the global IT bug. The consequences for all companies, airports and other systems in which the affected technology was used cannot yet be estimated.