The age of the returning engineering genius?

[WhiteBlue]

The spirit of F1 in recent decades has been change. Often the pace of rule changes has been lamented but nevertheless the WCC winners have come from a very established pool of two to three teams. So despite massive changes the winners have been either Ferrari, McLaren and a few times Renault.

In the last two years that trend has changed. We have seen new winners in Brawn and Red Bull colours. Obviously those teams have won on the back of strong engineering packages. The other coincidence is the existence of the RRA which has disabled the traditional winning teams to use their superior resources and wealth.

Is this trend going to continue in your view? Can we imagine that the next championships will be won by Red Bull, Mercedes, Williams, Sauber or Team Lotus? Would you like to see Ferrari and McLaren in the wilderness of the mid field for the next eight years?

For me such a perspective would hold some appeal. I would love the season to become more unpredictable. If people with bright ideas and engineering talent are enabled to compete on a level playing field with the traditional giants we could see the triumph of the previous mid fielders.

[raymondu999]

Well the longer we keep on a set of static rules, then the expenditure spent the previous year is kind of carried forward, no?

[Richard]

eh? So you are saying that McLaren and Ferrari have no engineering talent? doh!

Or did you mean small teams and big teams? Even then, RB have a huge team to rival McL and Ferrari, and Brawn won with a car born out of the huge Honda team.

[mx_tifoso]

Yes, but only because the winning teams have the ability to hire some of the best in the engineering and management fields. Not enough money -> no "top"* engineers and no proper development to compete with those who have more.

That applies to the most recent teams who have won the titles besides the duo of Ferrari and McLaren. Money has spoken on both occasions.

*whatever that means, money talks and many engineers within small teams could probably accomplish more given the resources. IMO.

[raymondu999]

What WB meant is, will it be:

a) good talent + excellent budget,
OR
b) excellent talent + good budget.

Having said that the Brawn was built with an excellent budget too. And Red Bull... I'm not sure what to think

[volarchico]

What WB meant is, will it be:

a) good talent + excellent budget,
OR
b) excellent talent + good budget.

Having said that the Brawn was built with an excellent budget too. And Red Bull... I'm not sure what to think

You usually can't have "excellent" talent with just a "good" budget. Excellent talent costs an excellent amount of money.

[WhiteBlue]

Red Bull have claimed that they run the smallest budget of the four top teams. The common view is that they simply win by the superior engineering leadership. The price for retaining Newey is included in that budget.

Personally I'm simply fed up with seeing Ferrari and McLaren win. So anybody but those two teams will be a welcome change for me. I'm sure the many fans of the teams and their drivers would have a different view, but perhaps there are also others who would enjoy seeing some other teams win.

I remember when BMW-Sauber and Toro Rosso won races. It was always a big day for me. I would like to experience it with Williams and team Lotus as well. With restricted resources individual engineering excellence will make more of a difference.

[marcush.]

RedBull the smallest budget ...of course...
We have seen Big names and Spending combined with excellent facilities but not winning anything...
So i don´t think success is a matter of money invested or even the sheer size of the operation.the fact you have won last year or ten years ago does not help in terms of performance.
So the people who understand the current situation best will win ,given they get the chance to do their work.

[FW17]

Todays rules reward fine tuning of a design more than innovation. Only reason BGP and RBR were at front are because of the rule shuffle.

Would love to see engineering genius over big budget, but that will require opening up of rules to the level seen in the 70's where more than one concept can win races.

Today's rules are too restricted for a new (brilliant) engineer to be innovative as most/maybe even all ways of sticking a car to the track have been exploited and restricted

Ferrari and Mclaren did have a large budget for much of the 90's when they were behind other teams because of the lack of engineering talent. Could (and will love) see the same happening again but not sure if today's rules of polishing the body work will allow for it.

[Raptor22]

Red Bull have claimed that they run the smallest budget of the four top teams. The common view is that they simply win by the superior engineering leadership. The price for retaining Newey is included in that budget.

Personally I'm simply fed up with seeing Ferrari and McLaren win. So anybody but those two teams will be a welcome change for me. I'm sure the many fans of the teams and their drivers would have a different view, but perhaps there are also others who would enjoy seeing some other teams win.

I remember when BMW-Sauber and Toro Rosso won races. It was always a big day for me. I would like to experience it with Williams and team Lotus as well. With restricted resources individual engineering excellence will make more of a difference.

It is extremelyhealthy for other teams to win and not have Ferrari and McLaren dominate like they did at the turn of the century.

AS far as requiring the budget to win, this is important. A team on a GBP50Million budget won't come near a team on GBP 150million by virtue of the fact that they simply have fewer brains to arrive at the same conclusions. You will find the one off anomaly where a smal team comes up with a brilliant idea e.g. Torro Rosso's deep undercut STR6 but the larger teams have the resources to copy and close that advantage.
It takes a combination of mony and brains (Technical and managerial) to win.

[gridwalker]

I remember when BMW-Sauber and Toro Rosso won races. It was always a big day for me. I would like to experience it with Williams and team Lotus as well.

I can appreciate that; I always appreciate the occasions when under-funded teams can punch above their weight.

One of my favourite races was won by Olivier Panis, but driving the Ligier to victory at the rainswept 1996 Monaco grand prix had little to do with engineering prowess. In fact, that car was such a blatant copy of the Benetton car that they had to put "Fabrique en France" on the rear wing.

Given the way that F1 is heading, especially with Rain Man Ecclestone at the helm, future races may well be decided by the quality of the plumbing around the circuit. Does that count as engineering for you?

The regulations have been evolving over many years so that they dictate what a team can build, as opposed to what they cannot. This means that innovations become guided, rather than happening autonomously, as is demonstrated by KERS.

KERS is a drivetrain innovation that had to receive special sanctioning before ever hitting the track. I cannot remember a precedent for this. All other major innovations that I can think of were put onto the cars, then regulated as the technology developed. If the drivetrain regulations had been more open over recent years, energy recovery could have been considered as an option much earlier (if its merits really stood up to scrutiny).

Until this major stumbling block is removed, the teams who can afford to run simulations on every permutation of a design concept will always hold a massive advantage over the teams with less financial backing. The Red Bull and Brawn teams weren't built on a shoestring (though one may have been run on one for a year) and their investment paid off.

Did their investment buy talent? That is a matter for debate (usually with Segedunum on the MGP thread) but we will need to remove the massive regulatory roadblock before we can give talent a chance to shine without megabucks backing them.

[Raptor22]

+1.....

[Just_a_fan]

Red Bull have claimed that they run the smallest budget of the four top teams.

And yet they've been under scrutiny for possibly breaching the RRA. Presumably their budget deficit is like their engine deficit - purely in Horner's mind.

However, they have succeeded by creating an excellent car and giving it to two quick drivers. Drivers' salaries are also part of the budget and the best drivers cost way more than the best engineers. Indeed, Ferrari used to pay their drivers more than Minardi's entire budget for a season. No matter how good Minardi's car was (and it wasn't a bad bit of kit) they would never do well with pay-drivers behind the wheel.

So, in summary, you need decent engineers wisely using a good-sized budget to build a decent car for quick guys to use. No change there then.

[mep]

I don't really get what you mean. F1 was usually won by the best car. The best car is likely to be build by the best engineers. You need money to hire them and to give them the tools they demand. That’s exactly what RedBull did. They spent a massive amount of money to hire the best engineers and got their success by this. But money alone gives you nothing.
If you have the biggest budged and best tools but hire just average guys you won't be successful. On the other hand some superior guys with average tools can easily beat average engineers with the best tools. Also don’t forget that whenever some engineer switches teams he will carry some knowledge to his new employee. Big names mean nothing when they are unable to keep their staff.

[Pandamasque]

I like how WB presents Honda Racing and Red Bull Racing as main examples of underfounded teams