I thought the same thing while reading the article. The whole part about Power BI is definitely an advertisement, it has little to do with the rest of the story.
For sure.
I have worked in F1 at the forefront, and they are so good despite still being tied to Microsoft and Oracle. The real hard problems are not done on Windows of course. They are using e.g a soft real-time OS - inTime - beneath Windows. Wind tunnel, engine, transmission, vehicle simulations are sometimes cross compiled to special hardware.
But SW development on the other hand if so much easier on Windows, esp now with .Net and c#. I just didn't see real-time c# yet.
Microsoft are listed as a "partner" on the Renault Sport site [1], which may be a synonym for sponsor (even if that's simply providing free/reduced-price services). So yes, I would expect them to mention + promote MS services in their posts.
