Drivers may be in the hot seat at Formula 1 this week, but technology is doing all the leg work to make sure the car performs at its best.

And if you wondered who is using what, then wonder no more:

1. Mercedes

The Mercedes team is by far the fastest competitor this year, with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg racing ahead of the competition.

The car is exceptionally fast and it’s partly due to the technology it has in it. A partnership with semiconductor firm Qualcomm aids them with work on reliability, operational and power efficiencies and – most importantly – speed.

While the cars have smaller engines than in the past, they can be just as fast as their gas-guzzling big brothers.

2. Red Bull

Red Bull’s team has dropped off significantly in the past couple of seasons, but is still a force to be reckoned with.

One of its technology partners is Siemens, which is helping to reduce its overall carbon footprint, energy and utility usage.

Using the Siemens Product Lifecycle Management software, the team can design and engineer virtual models, and manage every part of the car, with the goal of shaving off any time possible.

3. Lotus

The team behind Lotus changed lanes recently and is now working entirely with EMC, having previously used Net App for its storage. Ultimately it found it easier to go to one vendor for one system that could do it all.

With a trackside V-Block that equates to 120 virtual machines, the team deals with data coming from 200 sensors per car. With an in-house suite of tools, the team can focus on a number of different areas and see where they can improve.

For example, the team were able to identify that every litre of fuel costs you .03 seconds a lap. The devil is now in the detail for Lotus, which is heavily invested in data analytics.

4. Williams

IT services and consulting firm Avanade was requested by the Williams team to use Big Data to help the team get on the podium.

The team generates around 120GB of data from sensors, telemetry and video feeds over the course of the race. This is used in real-time to analyse what the driver should be doing and what the team can do to improve their speeds and performance.

The real-time use of data only comes only after the adoption of Avanade. Previously all the data preparation took up a chunk of the engineers’ time.

5. Ferrari

Haas Automation might be on the horizon for the team as a technical partner for 2016, but for now Ferrari has a number of other partners, including Kaspersky Lab, which protects all the workstations, PCs and servers in the Formula 1 divisions.

The need to be so protective of technological information maybe suggests a lack of trust in other teams. However suggestions of team spying may turn out to be true, so Ferrari is keen to make sure it is well protected.

However with the team lagging behind its rivals in recent years, it might be less interesting a target for would-be spies than people have guessed.