Latency does not matter because the driver must do all the work controlling the car and the engine.
They use data links (at some point they used direct radio links, don't know what happens these days) back and forth from the car to the pit wall and all the way back to the factory. There's around 20-50 engineers working every time the cars are out on track.
But the telemetry is all one way, it's not allowed to control the car from the pit wall. There are computer programs and engineers analyzing the telemetry all the time but all they can do is give instructions to the driver.
You can regularly see/hear this happen in races. There may be a slight collision between cars and e.g. the front wing gets damaged a little. The driver will radio the pit wall and ask whether they have damage or not. The engineers behind the pits and in the factory will analyze the data from the suspension travel vs. pitot tube telemetry and conclude whether there's damage to the wings and whether that damage is grave enough to warrant changing the front wing at the pits (~10 seconds stationary).
Here's an amazing video from McLaren mission control in their factory in Great Britain while the cars are out on track in Korea on the other side of world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYhl7csZJHw
They use data links (at some point they used direct radio links, don't know what happens these days) back and forth from the car to the pit wall and all the way back to the factory. There's around 20-50 engineers working every time the cars are out on track.
But the telemetry is all one way, it's not allowed to control the car from the pit wall. There are computer programs and engineers analyzing the telemetry all the time but all they can do is give instructions to the driver.
You can regularly see/hear this happen in races. There may be a slight collision between cars and e.g. the front wing gets damaged a little. The driver will radio the pit wall and ask whether they have damage or not. The engineers behind the pits and in the factory will analyze the data from the suspension travel vs. pitot tube telemetry and conclude whether there's damage to the wings and whether that damage is grave enough to warrant changing the front wing at the pits (~10 seconds stationary).
Here's an amazing video from McLaren mission control in their factory in Great Britain while the cars are out on track in Korea on the other side of world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYhl7csZJHw