Mercedes F1 Team Hit with CrowdStrike-Stemmed Global IT Outage Ahead of the Hungarian GP

IT giants and large conglomerates came to a screeching halt as their Windows systems crashed. The reason behind it was a CrowdStrike update, which led to systems all over the world facing the ‘blue screen of death’. F1 is no stranger to this global outage as the Mercedes team saw its operations come to a standstill.

Pictures surfaced online showing Mercedes staff trying to deal with the dreaded ‘blue screen’. The viral pictures screamed irony as CrowdStrike is one of the biggest sponsors of the Mercedes F1 team. Their staff sporting the team’s kit featuring CrowdStrike’s branding made things even more hilarious.

Fortunately, the incident happened during the first practice session of the Hungarian GP. That means the team did not have to suffer any tangible loss owing to the outage.

One of the users on X highlighted how Lewis Hamilton faced issues with getting his car to start. However, no confirmation has arrived from the team so far as to whether it had anything to do with the outage.

Lewi’s car wasn’t starting up at one point

— Musk Melon (@dailyXmatter) July 19, 2024

Some other users were surprised to learn that a team like Mercedes, which is among the most resource-rich teams, uses Windows systems for its F1 operations. Hopefully, they have fixed the issue and won’t face any problems as the Grand Prix weekend progresses.

Any IT-related snags during the qualifying or main race could undoubtedly hamper their performance. Meanwhile, CrowdStrike has rubbished claims about the company and the customers using their software coming under a cyber attack.

Founder and CEO George Kurtz has issued a statement about successfully identifying the issue and deploying a fix. He further appealed to the users to approach only CrowdStrike representatives to fix the issue.

How Mercedes performed amid the outage

Mercedes has come to Hungary on the back of two consecutive wins. The team is growing in confidence as the upgrades continue to impress.

However, the Hungaroring circuit couldn’t be more different from a track like Silverstone, where Hamilton extracted a convincing win. Therefore, a drop in performance was expected, and that is what the Silver Arrows have seen until now.

In FP1, George Russell led the pack for a good chunk of time. However, that was until the Ferrari drivers and Max Verstappen pulled in some stunning flying laps. That saw Russell trickle down the order to finish the session in P4. Hamilton, meanwhile, only managed a P10 finish.

The second practice session was a bittersweet experience for the team as Russell tumbled down a position to finish in P5. Hamilton, however, has made progress and finished in P7.