FIA will use AI to police F1 drivers and here's how it works

Hey! F1 fan! Have you been looking for a new system that you don't really understand but which nevertheless will seem important? Have we got the news for you!

The good news is that if this new, AI-linked tech works, the FIA will have to spend a lot less active time looking for track limits violations, and will be able to flag the ones they find more quickly.

Hopefully, that means there will never again be a repeat of the situation from last year's Bahrain Grand Prix, when Alex Albon was eliminated from qualifying by a Nico Hulkenberg lap which wasn't deleted for 45 minutes, long after there could be any recourse for the Williams driver.

Motorsport.com have revealed that, beginning this season, a system called ECAT (Every Car All Turns, not a cat with a Discord server and a Twitch stream) will keep an eye on track limits at every corner with an advanced platform they say uses AI to understand every car's on-track behaviour.

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Track limits penalty process being streamlined

A new system added to RaceWatch can, apparently, recognise a car's silhouette and cross-reference that against defined reference points captured on camera, which is said to allow it to determine whether or not a car has crossed the reference line.

The FIA have said that the tool has cut the number of track limits cases requiring human involvement – which can number in the hundreds, and very occasionally reach four figures – by some 95 per cent. Human eyes will still be involved when strikes and penalties are handed out.

Chris Bentley, the FIA's Single Seater Head of Information Systems Strategy, told the publication: "It's allowed us to move up a level, manage all the cameras in one place, distribute the process in the computer vision and process other elements that we've had available in one place. "So basically, we can automatically flag when a car goes off track because the positioning data changes, or use geofencing: we can draw chicanes and virtual zones on the track that trigger an alert if a car enters them. All of this will already be operational this year, we've been working on it throughout 2025."

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