Microsoft, together with McLaren Electronic Systems, will be the official supplier of engine control units (ECUs) in Formula One World Championship for three racing seasons beginning with 2008. While the winning bid was announced as far back as July 5 2006, after a World Motorsport Council meeting, Microsoft, MES and the Fédèration Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) only announced the finalization of the contracts today.

"With the best interests of motorsport at heart, we have introduced new regulations that will help cut costs while also retaining each team's ability to compete hard and sustain safety levels," said Max Mosley, president of the FIA. "The tender process gave us an opportunity to view proposals from different suppliers. We selected what we consider is the most efficient and cost-effective solution for providing ECUs to the Formula One community. We will follow this project closely and look forward to seeing the results in 2008."

"In all industries, Microsoft's aim is to provide people with the right technology and the right tools to enable them to succeed in their business, while also keeping costs to a minimum," said Manuel Simas, director of worldwide automotive industry at Microsoft. "This is exactly what we are offering to all of the Formula One teams. We are very excited to be involved in this development with MES, of what we believe will be a robust, scalable and easy-to-use system. We are looking forward to working with MES and the FIA on this project over the coming years."

The ECU systems will be jointly developed by MES and Microsoft and all the competing Formula One teams will install them on their vehicles. The ECUs are designed to monitor all the aspects of the vehicle's power train from in excess of 100 sensors on each car, generating 100 KB to 500 KB of data per second or more than 1 GB of information per race.