Georg Beyschlag: TeamViewer and Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team partnership

Georg Beyschlag, Chief of Staff and Strategy at TeamViewer talks to Paddock magazine about their partnership with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team. I guess it’s not so easy to find someone who isn’t familiar with TeamViewer, which is headquartered in Goppingen, Germany, and employs more than 1,300 people globally.

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TeamViewer is a cloud-based platform with intuitive features to securely and remotely access, control and support any device, across platforms – from anywhere, anytime. TeamViewer also supports companies to achieve their digitalization and Industry 4.0 goals. Moreover, TeamViewer was named a winner at the 2021 European Customer Centricity Awards, being the best rated of all participating companies in the categories Best User Experience and Employee Experience. At the beginning of last year, TeamViewer was announced as an official partner of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team and Mercedes-EQ Formula E Team. 

The move 

TeamViewer makes the Mercedes teams more efficient, with optimized remote operations and enhanced connectivity between team processes trackside and back at base, notably in terms of race support during testing and racing. TeamViewer furthermore plays an important role in motorsport’s journey towards net-zero emissions, by enabling people and companies effectively monitor systems remotely. By enabling remote work and IoT solutions across multiple sites, TeamViewer technology can deliver further reductions in the carbon footprint of the racing teams, each of which achieved the FIA’s 3* Environmental Accreditation standard in 2020. 

Experts based at the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 corporate headquarters in Brackley could use smart glasses to give trackside technicians instructions for repairs to the vehicle.

Georg Beyschlag

Chief of Staff & Strategy, TeamViewer

The German company was thrilled to join a high-tech ecosystem that is engineering the future of mobility in the world’s fastest development laboratory, thanks to advanced performance hybrid solutions in Formula One and battery-electric technology in Formula E.

TeamViewer logo, George Russell, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team, 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix, Sunday – Steve Etherington

“TeamViewer is far more than just a sponsor of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 and the Mercedes-EQ FE Team – we are a technology partner. Motorsport is very technology and data-driven that’s why our software and the opportunities they bring make us an attractive partner beyond the financial aspect. The main objective of this partnership is to drive efficiency and thus performance across all operations through digital transformation” – said Georg Beyschlag, Chief of Staff and Strategy to Paddock magazine.

Q&A with Georg Beyschlag, Chief of Staff & Strategy at TeamViewer

One would wonder – are there any major differences between Formula 1 and Formula E when it comes to software and IT solutions?

Georg Beyschlag: For us, the partnerships with Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 and Mercedes-EQ FE are quite similar. With both teams, we are working on meaningful integrations of our solutions to support the teams in operating smarter, better and, consequently faster. In FE, we recently collaborated with SAP to showcase our solutions – SAP is not only a Mercedes-EQ FE partner but also one of our valued partners and we share the goal of digitalizing industrial workplaces” – Georg added.

It’s evitable that digitalization has a huge influence on our lives now and Formula 1 is a unique platform to keep being innovative.

GB: All our clients and partners help us to keep being innovative – as we constantly try to identify their needs and pain points to develop solutions and features they benefit from. If our solutions make them perform better, for example in being more efficient or cost-effective, we did our job right. Due to accelerating megatrends such as the spread of mobile devices, the increasing digital transformation and process automation, our solutions have established themselves as essential – for our clients and our sports partners. The Mercedes racing teams have been using TeamViewer even before the partnership was announced.

For the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Test and Development Team, TeamViewer’s remote monitoring capabilities proved to be a game-changer.

Georg Beyschlag

Chief of Staff & Strategy, TeamViewer

In F1 nothing is left to chance, and with our remote connectivity functionalities, the team’s operations were able to continue seamlessly when remote working became mandatory due to COVID-19. For the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Test and Development Team, TeamViewer’s remote monitoring capabilities proved to be a game-changer – with tests and labs able to run faster and more efficiently at the Brackley factory. In future, we are working on integrating our augmented reality solution with the team. For example, experts based at the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 corporate headquarters in Brackley could use smart glasses to give trackside technicians instructions for repairs to the vehicle throughout a race weekend. In any case, you can look forward to very interesting use cases” – Georg continued.

TeamViewer logo, 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix, Friday – Jiri Krenek

Win-win

So how much has TeamViewer benefitted from being present in F1?

GB: We couldn’t be more excited by the impact this partnership has had on our company so far. We perceived a massive gain in brand awareness and were able to have inspiring testimonials like Lewis Hamilton, George Russell and Stoffel Vandoorne try out our Augmented Reality solutions. That is also having a huge impact on the way our employees perceive us as an employer. It makes them proud to work for a company with such powerful partners. Furthermore, Formula 1 brings together decision-makers and many of the world’s largest companies. More than 120 listed companies are sponsors of Formula 1. 

The Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team alone has 22 partners and relationships with more than 200 other companies. Our partnership with the Team gives us access to a world-class ecosystem with a lot of potential enterprise customers.

Georg Beyschlag

Chief of Staff & Strategy, TeamViewer

2022 Barcelona Pre-Season Test, Day 2 – Finn Pomeroy

The Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team alone has 22 partners and relationships with more than 200 other companies. Our partnership with the Team gives us access to a world-class ecosystem with a lot of potential enterprise customers.

Finally, we were interested in what kind of applications TeamViewer is being used in both Formula 1 and Formula E? 

GB: Right now, TeamViewer is an integral support platform across the Mercedes racing team’s entire operations. We play an important role in supporting their race teams during events. Not only can Mercedes provide remote IT support to the travelling team, but also use TeamViewer for important connectivity between the limited number of trackside crew and the engineering team based in the UK. This way we are mitigating the risk of any downtime due to IT issues. And as a matter of fact, TeamViewer supports Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team’s efforts to reduce CO2 emissions due to avoided travel, a great contribution to their path to become Net-Zero.