Mercedes work to avoid negative impact of CrowdStrike IT outage at F1 Hungarian GP

Mercedes worked to ensure a global IT outage, which involved their team partner, did not affect Friday running at the F1 Hungarian Grand Prix.

An update deployed by CrowdStrike, an IT security firm and also a partner of Mercedes’ F1 team, triggered a global issue on Friday morning.

Air travel, banking and healthcare services are among the key industries impacted.

Even television channels - including Sky Sports, the official UK broadcaster of Formula 1 - experienced problems, as a result.

Mercedes were forced into action ahead of the first practice session at the Hungaroring.

The F1 team worked closely with their partners to avoid any negative impact on their track running, Crash.net understand.

Relevant fixes were applied, and Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were soon out on track.

Computer systems are integral to the smooth running of an F1 weekend in the modern day.

Every team is reliant upon their real-time analysis of data to make optimum decisions, which ultimately lead to the result in Sunday’s grand prix.

Communication, and the exchange of data, between Hungary and every F1 team’s headquarters - including for sim drivers to improve performance for the next day’s running - can make a critical difference to the all-important result.

CrowdStrike, meanwhile, are working to fix the major problems caused worldwide.

CEO George Kurtz confirmed: "CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.

"Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.

"This is not a security incident or cyberattack.

"The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."