Delivering Data for Motorsport Magazine
Eleven Miles are the strategic digital partner for Motorsport Magazine through a relationship that has spanned 10 years, and has resulted in a new website and underlying infrastructure that continues to evolve. In what would be the most significant enhancement to the website since launch, the Motorsport team came to Eleven Miles with the need for a comprehensive motoring database. The project, which aimed to set apart Motorsport as the go-to destination for motoring records and deliver huge value to customers, would involve the migration and presentation of tens of thousands of data points.
The huge data set consisted of more than 3,200 championships, 18,300 races, 17,600 drivers, 10,900 teams and 875 circuits. Critically, the database also needed to be a reliable source of truth ongoing for motoring fans everywhere, so had to be adaptable and allow for new data to be added continually. The resulting challenge was not only ensuring the load times and speed of the database remained lightning fast, especially when users filtered or searched, but that the style and infrastructure of the main site were adopted to provide a seamless user experience. From a technical perspective, the team achieved this through adopting a custom indexer solution that enabled the data to be stored in a relational format, producing load times under two seconds.
Migrating the 50,000+ pieces of data, spanning centuries of information required huge attention to detail. The migration process had to support both a manual and semi-automated import, which required a fully bespoke system due to the nature of the existing data.
Allowing Motorsport Magazine to leverage database statistics and information across the main website has led to improved content crossover and supporting information for their pages. With the value we place on taking an evidence-driven approach at Eleven Miles, we were eager to adopt user feedback to add new functionality. Users will now benefit from being able to apply multi-search criteria in combination within the database. As a by-product, the database can also now calculate on the fly, total counts for each of the filters on page listings so, despite the volume of data being handled, users can see in real-time how refined their search is going to be.
Some highlights from the database include:
Drivers: Lewis Hamilton
Motorsport Magazine have been extremely pleased with the delivery of this project from the Eleven Miles team, and we will be continuing to support them with their website maintenance and digital projects.
If you’d like to work with us on your next digital project, drop us a message and our team can take the reigns from there.