'I want Racemate to be the second screen': Infobip is helping TGR Haas to fund Formula 1 car development through an entirely new kind of fan engagement
We hear how TGR Haas and Infobip have developed a race-day AI companion to boost the fan experience
by https://www.techradar.com/uk/author/benedict-collins · TechRadarFeatures By Benedict Collins Published 28 July 2026
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Formula 1 is close to reaching 1 billion fans across the globe, rising from 12% year over year from 2024 to 2025., with the current figure standing somewhere around 800 million.
To try and capture some of this huge potential market, the TGR Haas team has partnered with Infobip, resulting in a novel way to stay engaged with fans while funding car development through merchandise marketing.
RaceMate is an AI-powered fan companion that provides conversational updates on the team’s grid positions, race and qualifying outcomes, and team race intelligence.
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Gamified engagement across the racing schedule
At Silverstone, the home of the British Grand Prix, I spoke to Michael Heath, Senior Fan Engagement & CRM Manager at TGR Haas F1 Team, and Ante Pamuković, Chief Revenue Officer at Infobip, to discuss how RaceMate has changed the face of fan engagement throughout the 2026 season.
Following the launch, Haas ran several highly successful fan quizzes through the Racemate chat - but Heath and the team noticed that fans were engaging in an entirely unexpected way.
“We actually started to see that fans were then asking this WhatsApp channel questions, but at the time we didn't have any capabilities built into it that would respond,” he explained. “That was ultimately what fans wanted to do, how they wanted to interact, that's kind of where RaceMate was then born from.”
Racemate runs on Infobip’s AgentOS platform, which has allowed Haas to set guardrails on the topics of conversation users can begin, and helps steer fans back on to relevant topics about TGR Haas.
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