Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team’s real-world usage of CoreWeave and NetApp tools differs from initial partnership announcements, highlighting the intricate nature of modern motorsport storage and compute infrastructure. New findings confirm the team owns its GPU hardware, with CoreWeave managing the hardware and running AI workloads, while all current data processing remains on-premises.
Top-tier sponsors deliver technical infrastructure for marketing purposes at race events and the team’s Silverstone headquarters. Aramco serves as the primary sponsor, with NetApp and CoreWeave as key technology partners. NetApp began its sponsorship in 2021; Pure Storage (now Everpure) previously supplied all-flash storage via a 2020 ServiceNow deal. NetApp took over full storage responsibilities in 2023, completing a full migration from Pure Storage arrays to 100% NetApp infrastructure in October 2025.
The team deploys a full suite of NetApp solutions across trackside and HQ environments, including FlexPod, BlueXP, Data Infrastructure Insights, ASA A-Series block storage, StorageGRID object storage, and Cloud Volumes ONTAP for AWS, Azure and GCP cloud data resilience.
Neocloud provider CoreWeave offers global GPU-as-a-Service from distributed data centers including London facilities. In May 2025, it announced a multi-year partnership as Aston Martin’s official AI cloud computing partner, stating it would migrate the team’s on-prem compute to large-scale cloud infrastructure. Notably, CoreWeave’s data centers primarily rely on VAST Data storage, alongside WEKA, DDN, IBM Spectrum Scale and Pure Storage, with no native NetApp integration. Its S3 object layer uses LOTA caching to place data directly on GPU nodes.
A key F1 technical workload is Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) wind tunnel simulation, which analyzes airflow around race car models. Regulated Restricted CFD (RCFD) solver phases are currently banned from GPU acceleration per FIA rules. Core solver computations must run exclusively on certified homogeneous CPU cores, with all floating-point and integer operations restricted from offloading to external accelerators. Teams must formally declare hardware specs to the FIA and submit logs for regular audits.
To level competitive ground, the FIA caps CFD workloads via Allocation Unit hour limits calculated by CPU core count, clock speed and FLOPS performance. GPU usage for CFD solvers will only be permitted starting January 1, 2028, rendering CoreWeave’s GPUaaS irrelevant for regulated CFD work for the next two years.
Aston Martin hosted a Network Technology Forum at its Silverstone HQ earlier this month, gathering partners including CoreWeave, NetApp, Zscaler, Cohere and Arm for panel discussions on motorsport technology strategy.
During the event’s media roundtable, team CIO Fabrizio Pilotti clarified key operational details: NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is not in active use; all data processing runs on-premises with no CoreWeave cloud processing involved; the team owns all GPU hardware, with CoreWeave responsible for hardware operation and AI model execution.
Following these discrepancies with official announcements, further inquiries sought clarity on cloud deployment, workload placement and cross-platform interoperability. The team declined detailed architectural disclosures to protect competitive advantages, offering only high-level updates.
It confirmed Cloud Volumes ONTAP remains part of its 2024 renewed NetApp partnership stack, though seasonal infrastructure iterations have modified legacy configurations. The team also noted its workloads dynamically shift between on-prem and cloud resources based on real-time compute demand, with no public breakdown of individual workload placements.
The CoreWeave partnership remains active, designed to shift on-prem infrastructure to cloud for AI-accelerated engineering, though specific hardware and workload details remain undisclosed. All cross-stack interoperability architecture is kept confidential for competitive and security reasons.
Overall, Aston Martin’s implementation of CoreWeave and NetApp technologies is progressing slower than initial announcements implied. CoreWeave GPU acceleration for core CFD solvers will not become regulatory compliant until 2028, delaying full cloud compute integration for the team’s key aerodynamic simulation workflows.
Beijing Qianxing Jietong Technology Co., Ltd.
Sandy Yang/Global Strategy Director
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Email: yangyd@qianxingdata.com
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