CrowdStrike-sponsored Mercedes Formula 1 team hit by sponsor's own IT glitch at Hungarian Grand Prix

In a bizarre turn of events, the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula 1 team found itself momentarily entangled in the widespread IT outage caused by its own sponsor, cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike.

The outage, stemming from a faulty content update for Windows, wreaked havoc on Microsoft users globally, causing the dreaded "blue screen of death" and disrupting operations for countless businesses and organisations. Even international flights were grounded amidst the chaos.

For the Mercedes F1 team, the timing couldn't have been worse. As they prepared for the Hungarian Grand Prix Free Practice 1 session, team members were met with the same blue-screened computers plaguing users worldwide, a moment of irony captured in a widely circulated photo showing those same team members sporting CrowdStrike-branded t-shirts.

CrowdStrike attributed the outage to "a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts," assuring users that it was not a security breach or cyberattack.

Despite the initial disruption, Mercedes swiftly resolved the issue, thanks to prompt action from CrowdStrike.

"We applied some fixes this morning, which we did immediately with CrowdStrike's support, and our operations at the track were unaffected," a Mercedes spokesperson told Business Insider.

Mercedes were affected by the global Crowdstrike outage today during FP1 👀 pic.twitter.com/sPgPPhLpWV