Engineering´s level in F1

[Greg Locock]

The crossover between F1 engineers and those in automotive OEMs is quite large, not very surprisingly. In general ex F1 engineers are pretty good technically and prepared to work long hours. Ex aerospace engineers can be very very good technically, and are also prepared to work long hours, and get promoted (that is they know about the other stuff, not just engineering). I suspect you are more likely to innovate usefully in automotive OEMs than either of those other industries, due to gob smackingly larger budgets and greater tolerance of risk respectively.

[ringo]

I think there are just as smart people in the automotive industry, if not more experienced and knowledgable.
I don't think F1 engineers are anything special. Ultimately an F1 team is a manufacturing operation, and like any factory you will have engineers that either design or plan.
Most times the designs are based on standards, or company best practice. And if they can't handle it, they outsource to consultants. So yeah, i think an F1 team is just a manufacturing company with a bunch of engineers.
Engineering in BMW or Porsche or Toyota to me is more impressive.

[Jersey Tom]

one of the things that atract me to F1 is the idea that those cars althought just race cars are very advanced in a engineering point of view in comparissson with the world "biggest players" in science.

Not that I want to disillusion you in your attraction to F1, but as I alluded to earlier... I just don't see F1 cars as anywhere near as advanced as the "world's biggest players in science." As some others have kind of mentioned, I'm not even sure I'd say F1 is pinnacle of automotive engineering as far as "advancement" goes. Might be on par in some areas, probably trailing in many others, maybe ahead in a select few.

As I've pointed out before, the R&D budget for a big global OEM like Ford is on the order of billions of dollars. Billions.. The R&D budget of a F1 team is what, some millions or tens of millions of dollars? It's not even close. The things you can do with a lot of time, people, and money are astounding. A comparatively small budget F1 operation getting to a new race track every couple weeks - it's just not even the same league. IMO this is why so much technology transfer has happened from consumer to racing, and not from racing to consumer.

Again, I don't want to take anything away from engineers who work in F1 or any flavor of motorsport. A lot of them are very passionate about what they do, work insane hours, and come up with viable solutions under intense time deadlines. That's what these guys and gals excel at. But as far as level of "engineering advancement" on the aggregate I just don't see it as this magic land that some make it out to be.

[Richard]

This is comparing chalk and cheese. An F1 team races a prototype chassis with experimental parts fitted at the last minute. Their main goal is to cross the line first while hopefully not going bust or failing arbitrary regulations. In contrast an OEM aims for 6 sigma quality control and long term reliability. Their main goals are cost certainty and customer satisfaction based on extensive research and testing, testing, testing.

A gross stereotype is that the successful F1 team has to rely on ingenuity while the successful OEM has the time and resources for death by analysis.

Both employ people much smarter than many of us will ever work with as well as employing not so smart people. So while Apple or Ford employ uber-smart people in their R&D we also have to consider they employ an awful lot more not so smart people in their production, distribution, marketing & retail. In an F1 team all those people are under one roof.

Personally I prefer relatively small teams building prototypes for the immediacy of being able to touch something and say “I did that”. The knowledge that something works thanks to your moment of insight or lateral thinking. Mind you I work in a culture with the mantra that the purpose of analysis is to verify design. Graduates reaching for analysis to solve a problem are told to get a paper and pen.

So what do you mean by sophistication? I’d argue some of the greatest engineering sophistication is derived from a pencil, not number crunching. A quick look at the list of Nobel prize winners for maths and sciences will show the greatest sophistication derives from small teams or individuals.

Sorry if all that is a bit obtuse. To answer your question directly, if you’re asking about the very best mathematicians working in a purely mathematical environment to meet extreme criteria then have a look at boffins working in finance. The experience of a couple of people I know is that you’ll need a maths degree from Cambridge, you’ll be burnt out and divorced by 40, but rich enough to never work again … or you can be an analysis monkey among a cast of thousands at Apple HQ.

[Stradivarius]

I think that the level of engineering can be judged in many different ways. If you look at the product, i.e. the f1-car, f1 does not score very high, as many others have mentioned, due to all the constraints preventing the car from being optimized. One example is that they are not allowed to run full scale wind tunnels and testing is banned for most of the season, which of course means that current f1 cars are developed in an inefficient way compared to what would be possible.

But in terms of the skill level of the engineers, none of the above matters. I guess you can compare an f1 car to an iphone in some ways. They are both competing against other designs using the latest and greatest within certain technologies. But you still can't make any meaningful comparison. One point that I want to make is that there is probably a lot of very clever people who do not want to work in such an "uncertain" business as f1. If all your work is at risk going to waste because Pirelli has introduced new tires with unknown characteristics, or because your engine supplier has fallen behind, you may prefer to work in a more systematic and predictable business if you are very clever. If you are not that clever, you may actually be interested in this unpredictability, as it might give you the upper hand some times.

[zeph]

F1 is child's play compared to the stuff we deal with here at Stark Industries everyday.

[Artur Craft]

I agree with what Jersey Tom said in his posts. That idea of F1 having the smartest people, and utter cutting edge technology and being the pioneers of the most advanced things is an extremely naive one.

F1 never invented any significant technology. It merely uses what other industries, teams of R&D elsewhere have developed over the many decades. Wind tunnels exist since very early the past century and any improvements made throughout it's history was not due to F1 engineers. CFDs are basically the same thing, they existed prior to being used in F1 and are developed by other companies and teams of R&D to which F1 is merely a client. Carbon fiber tech is the same and I could go on and on with this...

To work in F1, take a guy like Newey(the ultimate example), you don't need super advanced knowledge in math. You have to know basically just the same advanced math employed in pretty much any area of engineering. It's not like the kind of math that are developed in the Math Departments of the best Universities/Colleges around the globe.

This mystique around F1 is just not justified, in my view. BTW, I'm not saying the top engineers of F1 are not smart, they are incredibly smart. They are just not head and shoulders smarter than everybody else as seems to be the belief among some fans(not saying it's your case, Masato)

[mantaque]

I don't agree with you Artur Craft.

Firstly, to get employed in F1 team you need to be a graduate with high degree, with experience in your part of job, not only in theory, but also in practice (very often a few years of expierience is needed). As engineer you need to understand not only what you are doing, but have knowlegde of physics, maths, materials, people management.
If it's not that hard to work there, why they employ so small amount of people? Why not employ hundreds of students for half the price?

F1 are not pioneers? Well, how about monocoque? McLaren first used CF monocoque in 1983 and the other followed. Now almost every LMP1, LMP2, single seaters cars are using it. We see also, that cars like McLaren P1, Ferrari LaFerrari, Lamborghini, Pagani, Koenigsegg all using monocoques as safety structures.

More inventions here:http://www.infoniac.com/hi-tech/formula ... world.html

[Lycoming]

Firstly, to get employed in F1 team you need to be a graduate with high degree, with experience in your part of job, not only in theory, but also in practice (very often a few years of expierience is needed). As engineer you need to understand not only what you are doing, but have knowlegde of physics, maths, materials, people management.

How does that differentiate it from almost any other decent engineering job?

If it's not that hard to work there, why they employ so small amount of people? Why not employ hundreds of students for half the price?

If they could afford to employ more people, they would. And employing that many students sounds like a huge pain to coordinate for a small company like an F1 team.

F1 are not pioneers? Well, how about monocoque? McLaren first used CF monocoque in 1983 and the other followed. Now almost every LMP1, LMP2, single seaters cars are using it. We see also, that cars like McLaren P1, Ferrari LaFerrari, Lamborghini, Pagani, Koenigsegg all using monocoques as safety structures.

The first Mclaren tub was constructed similarly to how they had been building aluminum tubs for years. The only difference was they used carbon composite skins. Where did the technology for that come from? Spoiler alert: not mclaren. Even later when they started moulding tubs, they needed help from aerospace companies. The monocoque chassis is just trickle-down from the aerospace industry. They adapted techniques and knowledge that extends back to the 60s to create structures for automotive use, that's all. None of the teams, then or now, had the capability to develop the technology to that point in a reasonable timespan.

And that article is just a list of things that also happen to have a purpose in F1. F1 did not pioneer carbon fiber, hydraulic dampers, flywheel energy storage or inconel.

[CBeck113]

The only difference between F1 engineers and other engineers is the targets they are expected to reach. You don't go to F1 University, you go to a university and study aerodynamics, Physics, mechanical engineering, automotive engineering or material engineering / chemistry. If you want to get into F1, you go to a F1 team or any other higher level racing manufacturer and do apprenticeships (as many as possible) to gain experience, which is the major necessary qualifier for any professional level job...anywhere.
The "back door" would be to work for a car manufacturer (Mercedes jumps to mind) and move to the F1 team internally. Also requires lots of time and interest.

Summary: bust your balls for the company and be a nice person at the same time, and you'll have good chances. Know your --- on top of that and you have all chances. In every job.

[Jersey Tom]

If it's not that hard to work there, why they employ so small amount of people? Why not employ hundreds of students for half the price?

From my perspective, that's pretty much what they indeed do!

I'd say they employ a fair amount of people, and pay pretty poorly (for new engineers). By the numbers I've heard at least, you could probably get paid double and work way fewer hours in other industries or elsewhere in the world.

F1 are not pioneers?

Generally / typically speaking.. no, not really.

[bhall]

It may seem counterintuitive, but I'm of the mind that the relative need for engineering talent/ability in racing is inversely proportional to the degree of freedom allowed in any given discipline - to an extent.

What I mean is that you might be able to cut a few corners here and there in a more open series, and the strength of your overall concept can mask those deficiencies. But, in a spec-series, where everyone works on the exact same concept, winning requires you to consistently do everything better than everyone else, because there's nowhere to hide.

That's why the same teams dominate NASCAR year in and year out, despite the series' ostensibly "stock" nature.

[mantaque]

If it's not that hard to work there, why they employ so small amount of people? Why not employ hundreds of students for half the price?

From my perspective, that's pretty much what they indeed do!

I'd say they employ a fair amount of people, and pay pretty poorly (for new engineers). By the numbers I've heard at least, you could probably get paid double and work way fewer hours in other industries or elsewhere in the world.

F1 are not pioneers?

Generally / typically speaking.. no, not really.

Well thay are, in my mind, at least in racing disciplines, especially open-wheelers. I'm not putting F1 engineers above all else, and also I don't underestimate them just because they didn't discover electricity.