Adobe up to the BAR

Putting BAR/Honda to the test

By Martin Banks • Get more from this author

Posted in Software, 19th September 2005 07:38 GMT

It’s a hard life, being forced to stand on the VIP balcony at the Circuit de Catalunya outside of Barcelona at a BAR/Honda F1 racing team test day while Jenson Button drives down the start-finish straight with a banshee howl that drills a neat hole right through the head from ear to ear. But someone has to do it.

The reason for such suffering is the fact that Adobe has just signed up to be a technology provider to BAR/Honda – a deal expected to be formally announced in a couple of weeks. This isn’t a full sponsorship deal, so don’t go looking for any Adobe decals on the cars or flame-proof suits, and the company is still coy about exactly what it does entail. It does seem, however, that the deal entails some interesting quid pro quos.

BAR will be using Adobe’s creative tools, such as Photoshop and the rest, in generating future artwork for promotion and PR activities. But Adobe will also be using the team as a test-bed for some technology developments in Acrobat expected to make their way into the product next year. Asking what that might be led only to long silences punctuated by more of Master Button’s banshee howling.

Guesses along the lines of using Acrobat as a transport vehicle for complex, dynamic engineering data and documents between the Team and suppliers such as Honda seem the most likely bet, if only because such suggestions produced the longest silences.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, BAR does know it is being used as the guinea pig. ®

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