The age of the returning engineering genius?

[strad]

I don't want to ruffle any feathers but I have found this premise to be the reverse.
We have too many "engineers" these days.
I can't tell you the number of times I have heard team managers say they needed good mechanics to keep the engineers grounded. That so often engineers go off on wild tangents that aren't workable or applicable in the real world.

[forty-two]

... so often engineers go off on wild tangents that aren't workable or applicable in the real world.

Far be it for me to defend the regulations, but surely with the restrictive regs, part of a good engineer's brief is to look for ways to go off piste with a blue sky design that they believe can give their team a serious advantage without suffering too greatly from the pitfalls.

What, for example if Adrian Newey had abandoned the idea for an EBD or a flexible front wing as being too outlandish and risky?

For me, design is always a compromise, regulations or not. The trick is to have a good idea of whether your departure from the norm offers enough advantages to overcome it's potential downsides, while having a very good idea of what those downsides might be.

[segedunum]

Engineering talent has always been extremely important and still is. There are still a great many things you can't even test still in a tunnel or with CFD, so the only form of simulation you have is an engineer's mind. Just what is going to happen when we put this thing on the track? In fact, with the lack of on track testing now engineers who can think ahead, work out what should be put on the car first and get a feel for what will happen when they put a modification on track are more important than ever.

I have noticed a trend over the past few years in a few teams where they believe that hiring the best people and paying them the best money isn't necessary. Teams like Williams, Honda/Mercedes and even McLaren believed that with enough simulation and test rigs and with reams and reams of data they would somehow magically arrive at the best possible solution. Honda even believed that they could simply copy rival cars, run simulations and then implement that on their cars and they would never be behind.

For example, I was at Williams a few years ago tinkering about with their CFD systems and I was amazed at how they worked. It consisted of engineers chucking stuff into a CFD workstation and if it increased downforce they would then think it was a good candidate to put in the wind tunnel. Clearly, that hasn't been working well for them.

[Ciro Pabón]

I guess in some languages genius and clever are synonyms.

Actually, I was going to write something more caustic, but then McLaren hired me, and my genius... poof.

Same thing happened to Coulthard.

[Ciro Pabón]

...
I can't tell you the number of times I have heard team managers say they needed good mechanics to keep the engineers grounded...

This is achieved in an easier way with a keg of beer.

[Ciro Pabón]

What WB meant is, will it be:

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

No, no, no.

It's

a) good talent + excellent rum
OR
b) good rum + excellent babes (then, why talent?)

There is also the fabled c) option (good babes + excellent rum) but this is only an hypothesis these days.

[Tamburello]

I'm with you WB, I loved Brawn and Red Bull winning and hope the 'superpowers' get their arses whooped for a while longer, and then they can win again...

It would be great if the likes of Williams or Renault or Sauber can start challenging for wins too.

[volarchico]

For example, I was at Williams a few years ago tinkering about with their CFD systems and I was amazed at how they worked. It consisted of engineers chucking stuff into a CFD workstation and if it increased downforce they would then think it was a good candidate to put in the wind tunnel. Clearly, that hasn't been working well for them.

I would love to have that opportunity to "tinker" with a team's CFD systems! But I can understand what you are saying...sometimes the focus is more on the technology development system (CFD) than it is on the tech development itself!

[Shrieker]

Has it really changed ? I mean the title winners. Take Brawn(2009)and Newey(2010) out of the equation; would Brawn GP (now that's irony ) and Red Bull still have won ? Both Newey and Brawn were massively successful before, so I'd say the trend has not changed.

[WhiteBlue]

At the moment I see a chance for Mercedes catching and displacing McLaren to P4 and Red Bull beating Ferrari again to P1.

Ferrari have been the last of the grandee teams to comply with the resource restrictions in F1. As a result their Ferrari 150° Italia had vastly more development resources up to this point. But from now on there is a level playing field for the top four teams who run fully financed budgets without cash flow issues.

There could be a chance that Merc even catch up with Ferrari over the season. Their drivers seem to be a bit more balanced and that could mean more WCC points from their potential.

I would love to see a Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren order at the end of the year.