From the roar of Formula One engines at Silverstone to the thundering quarter mile sprints at Santa Pod Raceway, motorsport events demand precision, coordination, and split-second decision-making. Behind every successful race weekend lies an intricate web of planning, mapping venues, coordinating thousands of contractors, managing crowd flows, and ensuring safety across sprawling sites.
The complexity is staggering: venues hosting hundreds of thousands of spectators over a weekend, coordinating hundreds of suppliers and contractors, managing everything from temporary power distribution to emergency access routes, all while adapting to last-minute changes and weather conditions.
Traditional planning methods such as CAD drawings, Google Earth screenshots, and static documents, simply can’t keep pace with the dynamic nature of modern motorsport events.
Enter OnePlan, the collaborative event planning solution that’s transforming how motorsport organisations operate. Built for teams who need to plan together in real time, OnePlan gives every stakeholder, from in-house coordinators to third-party contractors, a single, always-live plan to work from.
From the UK’s premier circuits to international racing championships, event teams are discovering how OnePlan’s intelligent planning tools are solving challenges that have plagued the industry for decades.
The results speak for themselves. Silverstone Circuit reports a 13x return on investment, a 10% saving on man days, and a 5% reduction in supplier costs, all from adopting OnePlan as their single source of truth. MSV, managing 30+ events across multiple UK venues, now collaborates across sites in real time without the need for constant travel. And Santa Pod Raceway, with 80 events annually, has freed their team from hours of manual measuring and site visits.
Let’s explore how organisations across motorsport are using OnePlan Team to deliver safer, smoother, and more successful events:
What Makes Motorsport Events So Complex?
Before adopting modern event planning solutions, motorsport organisations faced a constellation of interconnected challenges that made event execution unnecessarily stressful and inefficient.
The Version Control Nightmare
James Loveridge, Senior Event Manager at Silverstone Circuit, remembers the frustration all too well: “Before we started using the platform, we relied heavily either on mapping tools such as Google Docs or something along the lines of that, or CAD drawings. And with those, they’re never up to date or people are referring them to different versions and not one that is live.”
The consequences were significant: contractors working from outdated plans, teams duplicating work because they couldn’t see what others had done, and countless hours spent clarifying which document was the “correct” version.
Yusif Basil, Motorsport Consultant for RedBull’s Car Park Drift series, faced similar issues: “We used Google Earth and Sketch Up to draw the track. Our main challenges were the online sharing platforms.”
These makeshift solutions were not only inaccurate but incredibly time-consuming, making it difficult to share plans effectively with the expanding network of suppliers and stakeholders involved in each event.
Boots on the Ground, Time in the Mud
Max Frost, Events Coordinator at Santa Pod Raceway, describes the grueling pre-OnePlan reality: “A lot of time was spent with boots on the ground, measuring wheels, bits of paper and dodgy drawings, trying to plan out the layout of each event. We primarily used a rough layout in other software that gave us an idea of the site layout, but these weren’t to scale so working out layout could be difficult.”
With 80 events annually, this manual approach consumed enormous resources that could have been better spent on strategic planning and attendee experience improvements.
Multi-Site Coordination Chaos
For organisations like MSV (MotorSport Vision), managing over 30 events annually across multiple UK venues created unique coordination challenges. Alex Robinson, Event Project Manager at MSV, explains: “Each of our sites has its own operational team, and every location comes with unique challenges. Some sites require careful vehicle management, while others need specific arrangements for foot traffic. We have to collaborate closely with each site team to ensure everything runs smoothly.”
The constant need for physical site visits, coupled with the difficulty of keeping distributed teams aligned, meant that valuable time was spent traveling between locations rather than solving strategic problems. Communication breakdowns were common, and lessons learned at one venue weren’t easily transferred to others.
How OnePlan Team Powers Motorsport Events
OnePlan addresses these challenges head on with a comprehensive platform designed specifically for complex event planning.
Here’s how motorsport organisations are leveraging its key capabilities to transform their operations:
A Single Source of Truth
The most fundamental shift OnePlan brings is the establishment of one definitive, always-live event plan that everyone works from simultaneously. James at Silverstone emphasises the transformative impact: “We found it incredibly useful to have a live document that anyone can see at any point.”
This isn’t just about eliminating version confusion, it’s about creating a foundation for effective collaboration. “The main feedback we get from our other suppliers and contractors that we use is that it’s always live. The version number doesn’t change, it’s always the correct one when you go onto the link. And I think that really helps if we’re working on the weekend or different teams are doing stuff. It’s always live. It’s that one single source of truth.” James notes.
Image: Silverstone Event Plan in OnePlan
For MSV, this single source of truth extends across multiple venues: “OnePlan has completely changed how we communicate between our teams. It keeps everyone aligned and ensures we’re all working from the same plan.” Alex explains.
The platform allows them to capture learnings digitally from one event and apply them seamlessly to the next, enabling continuous improvement across their entire portfolio of venues.
"Being able to collaborate with our site teams live in OnePlan saves us a huge amount of time. We can flag issues immediately and make adjustments without having to physically travel to each circuit”
See It Before You Build It
OnePlan’s visual planning tools allow teams to model, simulate, and refine layouts before a single piece of equipment arrives on site. James highlights the practical power: “The use of OnePlan as a single source of truth,the main thing is being able to add either overhead pictures or CAD drawings into it as well so we can reference so that we can make sure we get them in the right locations and also color coding our stewarding positions, our cabins, or whatever we’re loading into it.”
For MSV, this visualisation capability is critical for proactive problem-solving: “Using OnePlan, we can quickly see how many cars can go into a particular area and work with the operations teams to determine if it’s feasible. It helps us make small but crucial changes to traffic flow and site accessibility, which ultimately improves the attendee experience.” Alex describes.
By testing layouts and simulating scenarios digitally, potential pinch points are addressed before they become real-world problems.
Image: MSV Event Plan in OnePlan
Max at Santa Pod Raceway echoes this sentiment: “OnePlan has enabled us to measure out, layout and redesign pit layouts without ever leaving the desk. Once we have an established plan, we will then use boots on the ground to mark out these areas, knowing that our ideas will fit within the given space on site.”
Precision Planning Tools That Save Time and Money
OnePlan’s suite of measurement, capacity calculation, and layout tools transforms tasks that once took hours into operations completed in minutes.
James quantifies the impact: “In terms of a percentage or monetary kind of side of things, in terms of what we’ve saved, we see about a 13 times return on investment on what it costs us monthly to implement it and time that we’ve saved the money. We’ve saved about 10% on man days by using this and not having to go out and do stuff manually. And we’ve probably saved about 5% on the supplier side of things as well.” James reports.
Max highlights specific tools that prove invaluable: “The measuring tools and 1:1 scale in particular are incredibly helpful within our event planning. Whether it be simply measuring from Point A to Point B or placing to scale, custom sized objects onto our site to ensure our layout works.” For crowd management, he adds: “Another key feature that is useful when planning our events is the ability to select custom crowd areas across our site to work out crowd capacity based on selectable ‘people per m².’”
James at Silverstone confirms capacity planning is his most-used feature: “The most frequently used tool for us is the capacity or crowd density function so that we can look at an area, take out sections if we’re putting in a bar or putting in some other infrastructure and look at how many people we can put in there.”
Real-Time Collaboration Across Teams and Suppliers
OnePlan breaks down information silos, enabling seamless collaboration between internal teams, contractors, suppliers, and regulatory authorities. The sharing capabilities are both powerful and simple.
James describes Silverstone’s collaborative ecosystem: “It helps us to share the plans with our different contractors, enabling them to have selected access so that we can develop the site and make the user experience for our guests turn up, a really positive one.”
The platform’s sharing flexibility accommodates diverse communication needs: “The way that we share our information with our contracts has improved significantly with the use of OnePlan. And as it’s always live, they’re always getting the correct information at the right time.” James explains.
For MSV, remote collaboration has dramatically reduced the need for physical site visits: “Being able to collaborate with our site teams live in OnePlan saves us a huge amount of time. We can flag issues immediately and make adjustments without having to physically travel to each circuit.”, says Alex. This frees staff to focus on strategic planning rather than reactive problem solving.
Max at Santa Pod appreciates the real time collaborative capability: “The ability to work on the shared events together in real time with fellow users within the company. Having the ability to see the amends that each other are making in real time, greatly enhances the ability to plan events.”
Yusif Basil at RedBull emphasises how OnePlan solved their update distribution challenge: “OnePlan’s online accessibility and instant updates allowed me to keep everyone in the loop.”
Safety and Compliance: Planning for the Unexpected
For motorsport events, safety isn’t optional, it’s the foundation of everything. MSV’s Alex explains their proactive approach: “The crucial changes always happen in the planning stage. OnePlan allows us to look at what worked in previous years, adjust for potential risks, and make improvements before the event”. By modeling crowd movement, access routes, and emergency paths digitally, they can anticipate and address safety concerns systematically.
James at Silverstone highlights how OnePlan supports regulatory compliance: “At Silverstone, we share OnePlan internally with all of our security contractors. So whether that be in house or third parties that we bring in to deliver the event, we also share with our local authorities.”
Accessibility and Ease of Use
Despite its sophisticated capabilities, OnePlan’s intuitive interface means teams can get productive quickly, without specialised training.
Max describes his experience: “It is an intuitive event planning [software] that is easy to use.” He emphasizes that: “The intuitive design features and structure of OnePlan makes event planning easy without requiring in depth knowledge of the software. With the extensive database of insertable Infrastructure, tools for measuring and zoning capabilities, there really is no situation that OnePlan can’t handle.”
James at Silverstone emphasises this democratisation of planning capability: “You don’t have to be a professional to use this. It’s all about that user interface. Before, when we were using CAD, you had to be almost a professional in it to work out how to add objects, move stuff around and then make sure you’ve got the correct date and version number and then share that around. Now, anyone can do that in our team. They can simply log in, they can start placing objects, start moving stuff around and start measuring or working out crowded spaces.”
Yusif at RedBull highlights the object library: “I often use fences, water barriers, vehicles, and other objects that help me visualise my event.” OnePlan’s comprehensive object menu provides the building blocks teams need without requiring custom design work.
Whether you’re managing a single circuit or a full racing calendar, OnePlan was built for teams like yours. Ready to see how you can transform how you plan?
