"The thing that really attracted me to Formula 1 is that it's always been about data and technology," says Graeme Hackland, Williams Group IT director and chief information officer of Williams Racing. Since joining the motorsport racing team in 2014, Hackland has been putting that theory into practice. He is pursuing what he refers to as a data-led digital transformation agenda that helps the organization's designers and engineers create a potential competitive advantage for the team's drivers on race day. Hackland explains to VentureBeat how Williams F1 is looking to exploit data to make further advances up the grid and how emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, might help in that process. This interview has been edited for clarity.

When your closest sporting rivals are running a business with an annual team budget worth more than three times your own, then you need to be innovative in sustaining a challenge. And when it is in a cutting edge sport like Formula 1, then teams such as Williams Martini have to make sure every penny they spend is put to best inventive use. The UK-based team's IT director Graeme Hackland says they spend about £100m ($154m) a year in F1, compared with what he says is Mercedes' outlay of £300-350m, and Ferrari's of £250-300m. But despite the spending disparity, the UK-based team, which has won the constructor's table nine times, hopes that technology, rather than splashing cash, can help them close the gap. "We believe we can take them on," the 48-year-old South African, who has worked in F1 for 18 years, tells the BBC.