Mercedes GP - Inauguration and 1st season

[xpensive]

is it only possible to aquire knowledge on university?
I have attended some open to public lecture I found interesting to me but very rarely it was what I really was looking for tbh..

We been around this before marcush. While there is little doubt that in many walks of engineering life, a university degree is not essential in order to be productive or even ingenious, but when it comes to understanding the theoretical complexity of today's Formula one cars, I quite frankly believe that it is.

Newey doing bureaucratic work ? I honestly doubt he would be available to even produce a summary of his work done on a wekly or montly base..a genius rarely is good at the "normal" stuff.so him pressing into organisational stuff would remove all the asset .He needs his own world where he can develop ideas and infect the boffins in the design area with his spark...

Isn't this xactly the reason for Newey's split with Williams, Parick Head did not want his star designer wasting his precious time on administrative things that comes with being "Technical director"?

[timbo]

Newey doing bureaucratic work ? I honestly doubt he would be available to even produce a summary of his work done on a wekly or montly base..a genius rarely is good at the "normal" stuff.so him pressing into organisational stuff would remove all the asset .He needs his own world where he can develop ideas and infect the boffins in the design area with his spark...

From the man himself

Q: You have been with Red Bull for almost two years now. What progress do you feel you have made in that time? Any setbacks?

AN: I think the key thing was spending a solid period of time understanding how the company operates and noting its strengths and weaknesses. From there, the task was to make the necessary changes to rectify any weaknesses and to play to our strengths. I started making personnel changes after about six months in the job and that’s now more or less complete, giving us a very strong team of people, which is now managed, very ably, by Geoff (Willis).

[timbo]

We been around this before marcush. While there is little doubt that in many walks of engineering life, a university degree is not essential in order to be productive or even ingenious, but when it comes to understanding the theoretical complexity of today's Formula one cars, I quite frankly believe that it is.

How do you xplain Byrne, being chemical engineer, had so much success in F1?

[xpensive]

We been around this before marcush. While there is little doubt that in many walks of engineering life, a university degree is not essential in order to be productive or even ingenious, but when it comes to understanding the theoretical complexity of today's Formula one cars, I quite frankly believe that it is.

How do you xplain Byrne, being chemical engineer, had so much success in F1?

Byrne has a university degree, which helped him in understanding the theoretical complexity of today's Formula one cars.

Anyway, with an enginering degree, you always learn a little bit of everything, even I had to take courses in programming machine code and modern physics, believe it or not. Not that I can recall very much of the former, I honestly confess.

[segedunum]

Letters after your name counts for little in real life.

Formula 1 is such a brutally analytical and methodical world to live in, where a dozen things all affect a dozen other things that you have to account for, that you have to be able to think in that manner. The fact is that the engineers around Ross Brawn in major positions in the past such as Byrne and Tombazis all have classical university engineering backgrounds, and they proved themselves in 'real life' by being amongst the best.

Judged on results alone by those with a biased agenda. Judged on his entire career by true fans of the sport.

Uh, huh. Alas, he will be judged on what he actually did and results over his career as a whole and not 'minus the second bit', as some people are clearly hoping. We'll leave it at that.

[segedunum]

How do you xplain Byrne, being chemical engineer, had so much success in F1?

It's the methodical, analytical and mathematical thinking that's important. Materials knowledge is also never a bad thing to have.

[xpensive]

I'm still afraid that Norbert Haug and Daimler have misunderstood RB's role in the past glorys, reading too much into the
"Technical director" title of his, when that usually means something a tad more engineerish in Germany, correct marcush?

[marcush.]

I take the bait .
You say ANY degree in university will do more or less as long as you got one...
I have no degree not even hons.But I got my job because of my analytical and structered approach and also for my ability to get to the ground of an issue.Much of it is simply not to stop half way and get trapped with what you want to see instead of being open minded and available to think laterally when it s needed or just beeing able to ask the right questions and don´t stop before having a full set of answers.

come on .You had half a year of lessons in programming and modern physic say 20 years ago (no offense here) and you would honestly say this does provide any significant input in your WORK ? I´d say your work and staying on top of it is by constantly updating your brain about what goes on in your field and even only in the periphery of it (lateral thinking ,anyone?) is contributing a lot more to how good the job is you are doing.
And tbh ...a university degree will not tell you really (or at all?) how to lead a group of people ...not only 5 or 10 but 500!!!!
Either you got that or you don´t .In a small group it may be possible to aquire the basics but for a big entity only the charisma and natural leadership will produce the desired results.

Is Brawn a genius ? Maybe not when drawing doing the concept a F1 car .But I think he would not claim anything even close to this.

[timbo]

I'm still afraid that Norbert Haug and Daimler have misunderstood RB's role in the past glorys, reading too much into the
"Technical director" title of his, when that usually means something a tad more engineerish in Germany, correct marcush?

Give him resources and he will deliver.
Actually 4th place is not too bad, considering his limited budget for development of W01.

[timbo]

How do you xplain Byrne, being chemical engineer, had so much success in F1?

It's the methodical, analytical and mathematical thinking that's important. Materials knowledge is also never a bad thing to have.

How do you know Ross doesn't have that?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

By intimating that Brawn is going to magically micromanage the development of next year's car you simply show a terrible lack of knowledge as to how an organisation can possibly work, but then, that's nothing new.

Did I "intimate" that? Nope.
Did you assume that? Yes.

Brawn directs his technical staff, therefore he has the responsibilty to DIRECT areas where he feels necessary. You cannot give credit to them saying 2009 was due to a DDD yet convenientl forget Toyota and Williams had one.
You jump on them for being 4th this year conveniently forgetting the team went through a restructuring phse where 40% of the team was cut loose.

You question validate reports of Brawn himself saying as much, calling it BS.
Well Seg, if it were your word or his I guarantee you most will take Brawn's over yours.

What exactly did Mercedes GP/Honda and Brawn do to you?

[marcush.]

let`s summarize .
Brawn has a lot more pluses than minuses to his record and was able to build a substantial career in F1.
The first year of Mercedes GP under his leadership was not quite as successful as the masses expected .Maybe this was fueled too much by the arrival of Michael Schumacher who as well struggled to meet expectations.
But did they break under that considerable pressure? I do not see any hint of them joining the usual hire and fire policy we see when big entities struggle to deliver.
I´m sure they are well aware of this happening if 2011 starts as 2010...
But rmemeber BMW ? they seemed to be contenders for the Championship for 2009 and came up with a complete desaster of a car .Now one year on we can see them coming back finding their feet again.
there is no guarantee that your next car will be competitive enough, it is clearly a question just how quickly others can develop and maybe find a new area of development you missed or maybe if you found an area worth exploiting .

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

found an area worth exploiting .

Exactly why Brawn is technical director.
He may not come up with the idea per se, but he can sure use great ideas effectively. This marks him out and why he is the man for Mercedes.
Any hoop-lah surrounding his credentials is rubbish, Where he goes the team does better.

[xpensive]

Sadly for Mercedes, RB himself rarely found any of those areas worth xploiting, either it was Byrne or the engineers at SA.

Unless RB has managed to find some decent design-engineering capacity over the season, his halo will be more skewed.

I'm certain this is where things went wrong, Norbert and Daimler thought that RB had penned those Ferrais himself!

[marcush.]

thomas...a good leader can and will allow and nurse good ideas coming from his group..I think thats where a good leader excels not by being the master in everything but open to the good ideas that are brought up and integrating them in the whole battle plan.
the leaders who know all better than their troops rarely are the ones motivating them to unheard of height of creativity and delivering the goods.