Ferrari is using IBM’s AI to create F1 superfans

法拉利正利用 IBM 的人工智能打造 F1 超级车迷

Two years ago, IBM realized there was one glaring omission in its roster of sports partnerships: Formula One. Formula One has become one of the world’s most popular sports, especially in the U.S., where Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” documented the working lives of F1 drivers and turned them into mainstream celebrities. The tech-centric sport has also become a hot ticket for tech companies like AWS, Oracle, and Anthropic, which partner with teams for sponsorship visibility and to provide data analytics and AI tools that can deliver a competitive edge.

两年前，IBM 意识到其体育合作伙伴阵容中存在一个明显的缺失：一级方程式赛车（F1）。F1 已成为全球最受欢迎的体育项目之一，尤其是在美国，Netflix 的纪录片《极速求生》（Drive to Survive）记录了 F1 车手的工作生活，并将他们推向了主流明星的行列。这项以技术为核心的运动也成为了 AWS、Oracle 和 Anthropic 等科技公司的热门目标，它们通过与车队合作来获得品牌曝光，并提供数据分析和人工智能工具，以帮助车队获得竞争优势。

So when IBM went looking for its next major sports partnership, it’s no wonder the company picked F1 and one of its most iconic teams, Scuderia Ferrari HP. “They’re the winningest team in history,” Kameryn Stanhouse, IBM’s Vice President of Sports and Entertainment Partnerships, told TechCrunch. At the heart of this partnership, however, is what has led other teams to start working with tech giants: access to more sophisticated tech solutions that can help them make the most of, especially, artificial intelligence.

因此，当 IBM 寻找下一个大型体育合作伙伴时，它选择了 F1 及其最具标志性的车队之一——法拉利车队（Scuderia Ferrari HP），这并不令人意外。IBM 体育与娱乐合作副总裁 Kameryn Stanhouse 在接受 TechCrunch 采访时表示：“他们是历史上获胜次数最多的车队。”然而，此次合作的核心在于促使其他车队开始与科技巨头合作的原因：获得更先进的技术解决方案，帮助他们充分利用人工智能。

In fact, one of the best parts of sports, Stanhouse said, is how much data is available and can be used to help people get comfortable with AI. “They actually see how it serves them,” she said of how AI is used in sports storytelling. The IBM-Ferrari partnership centers on that idea of storytelling, enhancing fan engagement by overhauling the technology powering the Ferrari fan app.

事实上，Stanhouse 表示，体育运动最棒的地方之一在于拥有海量数据，这些数据可以帮助人们适应人工智能。“他们能亲眼看到人工智能如何为他们服务，”她在谈到人工智能如何应用于体育叙事时说道。IBM 与法拉利的合作正是围绕这一叙事理念展开的，通过彻底改造法拉利车迷应用程序背后的技术，来提升车迷的参与度。

To help with this, Ferrari hired Stefano Pallard in the newly titled role “head of fan development,” who said the challenge the team wanted to tackle was not just reaching fans, but “making each of them feel like we know them.” “That starts with taking the data we get from the track and turning it into content that is easy to follow and engaging,” he told TechCrunch. Teams process millions of data points per second during each race, capturing every movement of the driver and the car. Turning this into content that fans can engage with is just one way that advanced enterprise AI can help businesses better interact with their consumers.

为了实现这一目标，法拉利聘请了 Stefano Pallard 担任新设立的“车迷发展主管”一职。他表示，车队想要解决的挑战不仅仅是触达车迷，而是“让每一位车迷都感觉到我们了解他们”。他告诉 TechCrunch：“这始于将我们从赛道上获取的数据转化为易于理解且引人入胜的内容。”在每场比赛中，车队每秒处理数百万个数据点，捕捉车手和赛车的每一个动作。将这些数据转化为车迷可以参与的内容，只是先进的企业级人工智能帮助企业更好地与消费者互动的方式之一。

Among the 11 teams, Ferrari is one of the few (alongside the likes of McLaren and Williams) to have a standalone fan app strategy rather than lean on social media or the official F1 platforms instead, showing how the sport is slowly starting to capitalize on its growing global fandom.

在 11 支车队中，法拉利是少数几支（与迈凯伦和威廉姆斯等车队一样）拥有独立车迷应用程序战略的车队，而不是仅仅依赖社交媒体或 F1 官方平台。这表明这项运动正逐渐开始利用其日益增长的全球粉丝群体获利。

Some of the changes to the Ferrari app were simple, like offering it in Italian. Even though Ferrari is an Italian company and many of its fans are Italian, their fan app was not available in Italian until the IBM partnership. Stanhouse said the old Ferrari fan app was a place where people went to find race details and then leave. This new app has games where fans can play with others in the app, new AI-written race summaries, more behind-the-scenes stories about the team and the drivers, a place to make predictions, and an AI companion for fans to ask questions.

法拉利应用程序的一些改动非常简单，例如增加了意大利语版本。尽管法拉利是一家意大利公司，且许多车迷也是意大利人，但在与 IBM 合作之前，他们的应用程序并不支持意大利语。Stanhouse 表示，旧的法拉利应用程序只是一个人们查找比赛详情后就会离开的地方。而新的应用程序增加了车迷可以在线互动的游戏、由人工智能撰写的比赛总结、更多关于车队和车手的幕后故事、预测板块，以及供车迷提问的人工智能助手。

“There are two drivers, but did you know it takes 24 people working simultaneously in two seconds to change a tire?” Stanhouse said, adding that storytelling helps fans feel closer to the team. Unlike other sports apps IBM has built, Stanhouse said the Ferrari app’s main focus is storytelling because it wants fans to stay engaged with it all year long, rather than for a few weeks a year, as with tournaments like the Masters. Engagement data for the app has been trending upward since IBM came into the scene, Stanhouse said, citing a 62% increase in engagement over race weekends as an example.

“车队有两名车手，但你知道换一个轮胎需要 24 个人在两秒钟内同时协作吗？”Stanhouse 说道，并补充说叙事方式有助于让车迷感到与车队更亲近。与 IBM 开发的其他体育应用程序不同，Stanhouse 表示法拉利应用程序的核心重点是叙事，因为它希望车迷全年都能保持参与，而不是像大师赛（The Masters）那样每年只关注几周。Stanhouse 表示，自 IBM 加入以来，该应用程序的参与度数据呈上升趋势，并举例称比赛周末的参与度增长了 62%。

Pallard said the team then uses AI to analyze engagement signals in the app, such as which content people like to read and the sentiment of the messages fans send. “That helps us understand what resonates most with the Tifosi [the fan nickname for Ferrari] and it directly informs how we shape our storytelling and how we deliver content,” he said. The team hopes to dive deeper into personalization and create more immersive fan experiences.

Pallard 表示，车队随后会利用人工智能分析应用程序中的参与信号，例如人们喜欢阅读哪些内容，以及车迷发送消息的情绪。“这有助于我们了解什么最能引起 Tifosi（法拉利车迷的昵称）的共鸣，并直接指导我们如何塑造叙事方式以及如何提供内容，”他说。车队希望进一步深入个性化，创造更具沉浸感的车迷体验。

The app developers also took into account Ferrari’s fanbase, which is much more diverse than it was even five years ago. F1 released stats last year showing that 75% of new fans were women, many of whom were Gen Z. A particular draw for women is the F1 Academy, an all-female racing series that aims to develop the next generation of women drivers. But these new fans, much like the old, are after one thing — more. “They are asking for more data, more insight, more features, and we have to be able to deliver that,” Pallard said. “With IBM, the vision for the next five years is to make every fan feel like the experience was built for them, whether they have been with us for 30 years or 30 days. That is how you build loyalty that lasts.”

应用程序开发人员还考虑到了法拉利的粉丝群体，该群体比五年前更加多元化。F1 去年发布的数据显示，75% 的新车迷是女性，其中许多是 Z 世代。对女性特别有吸引力的是 F1 学院（F1 Academy），这是一个旨在培养下一代女性车手的全女性赛车系列赛。但这些新车迷和老车迷一样，追求的都是一件事——更多。“他们要求更多的数据、更多的见解、更多的功能，我们必须能够提供这些，”Pallard 说。“与 IBM 合作，未来五年的愿景是让每一位车迷都觉得这种体验是为他们量身定制的，无论他们是关注了我们 30 年还是 30 天。这就是建立持久忠诚度的方式。”