There is an impressive new presence in the IndyCar paddock this season. Among the dozens of race haulers, rows of support tents, and numerous hospitality units that fill out the paddock, one structure stands out: A brand new operations trailer that Arrow McLaren has dubbed NTT DATA Strategy Control.
NTT DATA Strategy Control is hauled to each track by a traditional semi-truck and has the footprint of a typical 53-foot long trailer, but nothing else about the mobile facility is typical.
The trailer was designed from scratch by Arrow McLaren, is packed to the gills with technology, and has space for 37 team members to carry out all of the tasks required to run a successful race team. Referring to NTT DATA Strategy Control as a ‘trailer’ is almost misleading, because in reality it is a fully functional engineering office and control center on wheels.
The trailer expands outward on both sides and raises up to create a full second floor of working area, totaling nearly 1,000 square feet (93 square meters) of workspace. A dedicated room near the front holds a server rack full of electronics that feed 70 screens and monitors throughout the facility. There are even integrated Starlink satellite antennas built into the roof.
MotorsportWeek.com was given an exclusive tour of Arrow McLaren’s new operations hub and was shown just how integral the trailer is for the three-car team both during a race weekend and away from the track.
“We’ve got 24 seats. There’s a lot of people in here,” explained Robert Gue, Lead Design Engineer at Arrow McLaren. He was referring to the downstairs level only, looking on as four rows of team personnel worked away at their dedicated desks ahead of that weekend’s qualifying session.
“In the middle we have the race engineer for the drivers, the performance engineers. This is where all the debriefs happen before and after [each session]. The support engineers are along the side. Each person has their own station with an upper and lower monitor they can work on.
“We have headsets and we do all our briefings on Teams, that way people working remotely can tune in. People in the other trucks or people upstairs can tune in as well. It helps from a communication standpoint to be able to do everything online. Then you can share wherever, so people in the UK or people in Indianapolis can tune in as well and follow along.
“All our software tools are cloud based. What we call our run sheet, task sheet that the race engineers populate with all the comments from the drivers and changes. That populates in real time for anybody to see, whether they’re here, trackside, or remote.”
The number of people inside and amount of usable space was truly impressive. Instead of feeling like the inside of a semi-trailer, the workspace gave the impression it was located in a traditional office building. No space was wasted and the quarters were tight, but the layout was impeccably arranged such that movement was not restricted even when all 24 stations were occupied.
A lot of planning was required in order for the final result to function so well. The project took a full 18 months of work to design, build, and implement. During that time, Arrow McLaren expanded from a two-car team to a three-car team, and the new trailer had to be able to handle the additional personnel that the team’s existing assets could not.
“Other teams have dedicated engineering trucks, but none have the amount of seating or layout that this one has,” continued Gue, obviously proud of how the project turned out. “We had an old one that didn’t have any slide-outs, so it was just the central desk. We rapidly outgrew that as the team expanded.
“We started looking at this at the end of 2021. We worked with Featherlite, who was the company that manufactured this, over the course of the next year going back and forth on the design of everything. We tried to understand what they could do from their side on the manufacturing capabilities, then blend that with what needs we had to make it function.
“We spent a lot of time – I think I had six trips to Featherlite over the course of a year to touch base with them in addition to the calls we had. There’s no substitute to being there, walking around and saying ‘that doesn’t look quite right.’
“We knew we wanted 24 seats downstairs. We looked at different options of how to configure the slide-out. We also wanted to minimize the setup time. The monitors and everything stay put when we travel. It’s got a couple inches once everything is closed up between the stations, just enough room for the chairs to be stored in there.”
More than just function was required, practicality was necessary as well. With 16 separate race weekends plus testing dates in the 2024 season alone, NTT DATA Strategy Control needed to be able to be set up and taken down easily and quickly. Inspiration was taken from McLaren’s F1 paddock structure, but the scale of that facility means it is not nearly portable enough to be used in IndyCar.
“Another one of our deliverables was just being able to set it up quickly. From the time of the paddock load-in to when we need to be operating, probably in the 30-45 minute range. The trailer can be parked and then we can be up and running.
“We looked at what the McLaren F1 team has. They’ve got a much bigger area, but they also have to hire a crane and have six trucks that come in. It takes a day to set up, but it’s just not practical [for us in IndyCar].”
Fittingly, NTT DATA Strategy Control bears the serial number 007. The correlation to the fictitious special agent James Bond was coincidental – it was merely the seventh commission that Featherlite had done for Arrow McLaren.
It is not hard to see why the team embraced the 007 branding, however. There is an incredible amount of technology packed into the mobile strategy center, reminiscent of the feature-laden cars of the blockbuster franchise.
Without the benefit of movie magic to power the numerous electronics covering every wall of the workspace, Arrow McLaren had to place a dedicated server room inside the trailer and run approximately two miles of cables all throughout the facility. None of the cables are visible from inside, however, as all the wires were meticulously routed out of sight through the walls, floor, and ceiling.
“I think there is about 6,000 feet of network cable, because each station has three network cables to it,” continued Gue. “Then there’s probably another 4,000 feet of electrical cable and miscellaneous cables.
“We don’t have it set up now, but on our timing stands [on pit lane] we have an intercom system, VOIP based, that if you wanted to talk to Alex [Rossi] you could press the ‘Alex’ button. We have the room for that here. It’s all standard 1U rack height, and the unit could drop in on each workstation. We’re not there yet, but we wanted to future proof it.”
When set up for a race weekend, the operations center can tap into the high speed network connection provided by IndyCar. But during private test sessions and other events away from standard connectivity options, the trailer can connect seamlessly to Starlink and operate with full functionality wherever it is located across the country.
More than just a technological showpiece, NTT DATA Strategy Control was first and foremost designed to be useful. Considerations were made to ensure that team members could easily talk to each other in person as well as electronically. Many different problems present themselves throughout a race weekend, and whichever method of communication is needed in the moment is available.
As a single example among many, Pato O’Ward’s win at Mid-Ohio in July was the result of a large team coming together to collectively make a critical decision. After being stuck behind Alex Palou for a majority of the race, the team called O’Ward to the pits a couple laps early to pull off the undercut and take the lead on the final pit stop cycle. He held off the reigning champion for the remainder of the race, and celebrated on the top step of the podium.
Those types of race-winning decisions may seem simple from the outside, but a lot of collaboration happens among many different people in order to maximize the situation at hand. Strategy Control’s design allows all employees to work just as efficiently while back in the paddock as they would on the pit stand near pit road.
“The IT guys did a lot of work on the front side of it, getting everything configured to be plug and play,” said Gue. “It’s been good in terms of communication and workflow. I think the stations for everyone to work at are nicer; you’ve got two monitors there to put up information that you need and you can still have visual communication with your counterpart sitting across the aisle.
“It’s much easier just to turn around and say ‘Hey, what do you think of this’ rather than trying to chat on IM or anything like that. The pandemic pushed forward a lot of online collaborations, but there’s still no substitute for a face to face conversation. That goes a long, long way.”
If the bottom level of the trailer is the bustling work zone that crunches numbers throughout the weekend, then the upper level is where larger-scale decisions are made. Separate from the chaos below and presented with a commanding view of the paddock through a row of windows, Arrow McLaren’s leadership has the space and quiet needed to do their own important work in the team management area.
In addition to a short row of workstations, there is a closed-door meeting room and separate office space from which Zak Brown frequently hosts suppliers and guests to discuss confidential information. The meeting room is so useful that it has become a favorite among the crew, and is often used even when the trailer is parked at the team’s shop in Indianapolis.
Serving multiple duties and being customized to exactly fit the needs of Arrow McLaren, NTT DATA Strategy Control has quickly become one of the most valuable assets the team has. At the end of his tour, Robert Gue succinctly described what the team’s newest asset brings to IndyCar:
“It’s a statement piece that raises the game of the paddock.”
Motorsportweek.com would like to thank Robert Gue and the Arrow McLaren team for taking the time to give a tour of their new facility in the middle of a busy race weekend.
