How simplifying IT helps teams perform at racing speed
This is a guest blogpost by Musidora Jorgensen, UK & Ireland Country Leader, Freshworks
In Formula 1, performance is measured in milliseconds. Every system, every process and every decision has to work in sync to keep the car competitive. What’s less visible, but just as critical, is the technology behind the scenes. Without it, the cars don’t leave the garage.
That’s what makes the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team such an interesting case study for IT leaders. When you see how their operations run across a 22-race season, it becomes clear that success isn’t just about speed. It’s about clarity, consistency and removing anything that slows you down.
Across industries, many organisations are facing the opposite challenge. Technology estates have grown rapidly, often in response to immediate needs rather than long-term design. The result is fragmented systems, duplicated workflows and IT teams spending more time managing complexity than delivering value. In that environment, even small issues can have outsized impact.
Operating at speed requires simplicity by design
At McLaren, there’s no margin for that kind of friction. Each race weekend, a lean IT team effectively rebuilds a working technology environment from scratch. Systems need to be deployed, checked and operational in a matter of hours. If something fails, it must be resolved immediately. There’s no backlog, no delay, and no tolerance for ambiguity.
What stands out is not just the scale of the challenge, but how it’s approached in inherently complex organisations, placing emphasis on simplifying wherever possible. That means having systems that are intuitive to use, quick to deploy and capable of giving a clear, real-time view of what’s happening across the environment. It also means reducing the number of moving parts. Complexity might feel like a sign of sophistication, but in practice it often introduces risk.
This is where IT service management plays a central role. At McLaren, having a single, reliable foundation for managing service requests, incidents and changes helps create order in what would otherwise be a highly dynamic environment. It enables the team to spot patterns, resolve issues faster and maintain consistency across a globally distributed operation.
Why more tools aren’t the answer
The lesson for other organisations is straightforward. High performance doesn’t come from adding more tools. It comes from making better use of the ones you have, and ensuring they work together in a coherent way.
That’s particularly relevant as businesses look to adopt AI. There’s understandable excitement about what AI can deliver, but layering it onto an already complex estate can limit its impact. If data is siloed or processes are unclear, AI tools struggle to provide meaningful insights. Simplifying the underlying systems creates the conditions where AI can actually add value, whether that’s automating routine tasks or helping teams identify trends more quickly.
At Freshworks, this principle is at the heart of how we build our software. Our partnership with the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team is focused on supporting their global IT operations through Freshservice, providing a platform that is both powerful and straightforward to use. The aim is not to introduce another layer of complexity, but to remove it, so the team can focus on what matters most.
From the track to the enterprise
That philosophy resonates far beyond the track. Many IT leaders are under pressure to deliver more with less, while also supporting increasingly distributed workforces and always-on operations. Simplifying the technology stack as far as possible is one of the most effective ways to meet those demands. It reduces the burden on IT teams, improves the experience for employees and creates a more resilient foundation for the business.
There’s also a cultural dimension to this. In high-performing environments like Formula 1, there is a shared understanding that every role contributes to the end result. Technology is not seen as a support function operating in the background, but as an integral part of performance. When systems are reliable and easy to use, they enable people to do their best work without distraction.
For organisations outside of motorsport, the context may be different, but the principle holds. Whether you’re supporting a global enterprise or a growing mid-sized business, the goal is the same: create an environment where technology accelerates progress rather than holding it back.
The temptation is often to respond to new challenges by adding more tools or introducing new layers of process. But as McLaren’s example shows, the real advantage comes from doing the opposite. By focusing on simplicity, standardisation and visibility, IT teams can operate with greater speed and confidence.
In a sport where every fraction of a second counts, unnecessary complexity simply isn’t an option. Increasingly, the same is true in business.