Post here all non technical related topics about Formula One. This includes race results, discussions, testing analysis etc. TV coverage and other personal questions should be in Off topic chat.
* Diffrent teams use diffrnet structures. McLaren, Ferarri, Mercedes and Renault use a simmilar structure.
* Red Bull has a structure that basically has Horner as the guy out front with Marko as the "defacto" second guy, but with a structure that is somewhat more squashed that the guys above.
* Williams has a single team structure unique to them.
* Force India, STR and BMW Sauber use a simmlar structure with a couple diffrences here and there to the main boys, adjusting to their budget.
* Lotus managment structure arguably has too many Cheifs and not enough Indians.
* Virgin has a new buisness model structure.
* Hispania is a mess.
What would be interesting is if disecting a championship winning team, you could tell who is responsible for what.
The permutations are tantalising.....
The one thing id say that for the future of F1, and the resource restrictions, teams will have to carry slightly more management, posibly have 2 of everything if the callander gets anything more beyond 20 races.
Ideally id have this in my race day team:
* 1 Team Principle
* 5 Race Engineers that rotate between each driver and head engineer role (this could be changed however if teams are comfortable with 1 race engineer per car and a single head engineer for a season_
* 2 Head Data Engineers per car (Rotational, but could be changed like Race Engineers)
* 50 Mechanics per car (Rotating as each car i think should have no more than 15 guys each per race, basically a pool of 25 per car and 15 chosen each race)
* 30 track side data engineers, where only 10 per car are allowed at each race, a pool of 15 per car would be ideal.
* 3 Media Relations personell. 1 per driver and one for the team as a whole.
* Drivers supply their own physios or trainers, and are used for the pit board for lap times on the pit wall.
Id love this to happen:
* Limit each team to have arround 60 personell at each race.
* Teams limited to data spurts (100MB sufficently low enough?) every 5 laps back to base to [try and] stop "mission controls" being set up.
* Stop 75% of live car monotoring, basically only allow data engineers to monitor 30 things each lap with data being collected from each car at the start/finish line.
But back on topic;
Teams management structures has always intregued me, some teams get it right, some get it wrong. Some just stumble on something that clicks. But one things for sure, like all work places, there will be people that you just cant get rid of easily enough in some areas. And this is where F1 teams can afford some Gardening Leave to get rid of someone.
I think that theres a few teams going thrugh some quiet restructuring at the moment, Mercedes and Renault are probably the bets ones at that. Some going thrugh some major changes like Force India and Sauber. But there is one team that stands out a mile, and thats Lotus as who does what and where... with Gascogyne, Smith, Gass and a couple of others... Who has the final call and who manages what???
to me a rotating system of track engineers is all but impossible.The driver has one main
contact and that cannot change from race to race.there is more to it than engineering in that relationship.
Maybe the interface to the working teammembers is very important as well and also not something you would rotate around in a well oiled system.
plus there was the little thing of the tyre guys in a team..working in the background chipping away on the issues ..i´m not sure if the boffins are really on top of the cold pressure settings ...but maybe i´m opening a can of worms here..
If this is the sort of thing that interests you, take a look on Amazon for a book called 'Performance at the Limit; Business lessons from Formula 1 motor racing'. My Father co-authored it with two other guys, Mark Jenkins and Ken Pasternak. The second edition has just been released and covers almost exactly what you are asking.
...and Marcush, you hit the nail right on the head with that - Rob Smedley and Felipe Massa are a perfect example, Youtube is full of videos with evidence of this, including Rob saying word for word "he's like a little brother to me".
ESPImperium wrote:But there is one team that stands out a mile, and thats Lotus as who does what and where... with Gascogyne, Smith, Gass and a couple of others... Who has the final call and who manages what???
based on the previous post concerning 2011 hierarchy.
