Formula One: Singapore company Acronis inks big deal with Williams

S'pore firm, which tied up with Toro Rosso in 2016, to give data support to ex-champions

Serguei Beloussov with F1 simulators in the data storage and protection company's office. It is the first local firm to sponsor an F1 team.
Serguei Beloussov with F1 simulators in the data storage and protection company's office. It is the first local firm to sponsor an F1 team. ST PHOTO: LEE JIA WEN

Following a successful partnership with Formula One team Scuderia Toro Rosso since July 2016, Singapore-founded data storage and protection firm Acronis will now team up with nine-time constructors' champions Williams Martini Racing in a multi-year deal.

Russian-born Singaporean Serguei Beloussov, who is Acronis' founder and chief executive, said: "It's a very big contract for us. Williams are a famous team.

"It's a much bigger team than Toro Rosso and we think Williams can be No. 4 or No. 5 and be competitive this season."

He declined to reveal the sponsorship amount and exact duration owing to contractual obligations.

Besides Williams, who were fifth of 10 teams last season, Renault e.Dams are also using Acronis' software, and there are talks to continue working with Toro Rosso.

Williams chief information officer Graeme Hackland said: "For a Formula 1 team, data is at the heart of everything we do.

"From aerodynamics and design to manufacturing to racing around the world, we rely on data to drive our performance. Acronis will help protect Williams' on-premise and cloud service data with backup, disaster recovery, and secure file sync and share solutions. "

While Singtel and Singapore Airlines have been title sponsors of the Singapore Grand Prix, no Singapore company has directly sponsored an F1 racing team before Acronis.

The company's logo will be emblazoned on Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin's Williams cars.

Beloussov noted that there are several hundred petabytes (one petabyte is one million gigabytes) between different F1 teams who readily pay tens of millions for specialised oil and gas, tyres and data protection in exchange for precious seconds that could turn out to be a winning edge.

As the world of sport become more obsessed with data analysis, the 46-year-old is thinking of possibilities outside F1.

He said: "The next sport we pursue is most likely soccer. I was really sceptical about it but they actually have tens of petabytes of data and millions of fans and gigabytes of data of each fan all over the world.

"You have very smart people who are trying to play with all these data and figure out how to extract more money from fans and use it to buy better players and how to put better players into every game.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on February 14, 2018, with the headline Formula One: Singapore company Acronis inks big deal with Williams. Subscribe