As the 2026 Formula 1 season draws to a close, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 is cruising to glory in both the driver’s and constructor’s world championships. But behind its quest for pure speed is a tech stack which constantly evolves throughout the year, with the team supported by a host of partners to make sure it stays ahead of the competition. SAP is one of the team’s key providers, and following a key upgrade, we spoke to Dean Corcoran, Head of ERP, IT at Mercedes-AMG F1 Team, to find out more about how it is helping get the title push over the line. It’s obviously been a hugely successful season for Mercedes F1 so far. What role has your tech stack and partners such as SAP played in that? On-track success is ultimately delivered by the collective capability of the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team to design, build, operate and develop the car. Underpinning all of that is the technology stack that enables our people to do their jobs effectively. SAP is a key enabler of Team performance. It is the system of record across our cost, procurement, manufacturing and operational processes, providing the foundational data that supports many of the decisions we make across the organisation. What can you tell us about the upgrade? What benefits will it bring to the team for the rest of the season? The RISE implementation and upgrade to the latest release of S/4HANA was fundamentally about strengthening the Team’s core enterprise platform, making it more resilient, more performant and allowing us to take advantage of the latest functionality available to us. Importantly, it also creates the foundation for our future roadmap. It gives us the platform from which we can make greater use of new analytics capabilities and begin paving the way for future AI use cases. What challenges are involved in upgrading your ERP platform in the middle of the season? How much preparation was involved to ensure it didn’t disrupt your charge for the championships? Our S/4HANA platform is a business-critical application that touches all aspects of the Team’s operations, so a migration of this scale has to be meticulously planned and executed. Any disruption to the business could have significant consequences, particularly in the middle of a championship campaign. Our first phase was therefore about understanding exactly where we would see the impact of the migration and upgrade. The second was developing a comprehensive implementation and testing plan, with precise timings and staffing requirements. The final phase was about executing that plan with excellence…