F1 technical chiefs of today

[marcush.]

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/form ... 53407.html

very interesting read -again only german- about the departures of Willis from RB and Zander from Brawn GP.

Willis was suspended from work after Neweay relegated him to Administrative and Process only work and he was not happy with Neweys ever too tight scheduling of projects.
Horner removed him to keep friction out of the remaining engineering staff and conceeded there were too many leaders within the engineering department...

Zander left Brawn GP after a fallout with Ross Brawn about the technical direction to take for the 2010 contender .... that guy knew something very early on methinks.

[xpensive]

...
Zander left Brawn GP after a fallout with Ross Brawn about the technical direction to take for the 2010 contender .... that guy knew something very early on methinks.

I guess is that either Daimler xpected Ross Brawn to be a Technical director in the true sense of the word and Brawn tried to live up to the myth, or Brawn's technical directions were just being relayed straight from Stuttgart?

Rats, wrong thread, do you follow this one JET?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

I'm following it alright.

It's a pretty moot point. Bob bell is in place now, so the actions have been taken. Mercedes may have been speaking to Bell from as early as September 2010, when his fallout with Ellison was reported.
This shows that turnaround time in f1 can be laborious.

Identify your ideal man.
Sign the guy.
Await the audit from your new appointment.
Act on said audit(ie new staff, tech or suppliers).
Wait for the developments to filter in to future projects.

The only thing is, the time is unquantifiable. It will take at least 18months for the real fruits of this to be seen in my humble opinion. Although I can be wrong...

[raymondu999]

About Prodromou at Red Bull; as I remember it when he joined McLaren he wasn't actually an aero designer, but he was more of a CFD specialist; and he introduced CFD to McLaren. Would he not be doing something similar at Red Bull? I find it a bit funny if he were a CFD man at McL he would be an aero design guy at Red Bull.

I wonder though; regarding aero, have they got anyone who specializes in drag efficiency? Newey we know optimizes for downforce efficiency. IE loads of downforce for least drag possible. But as they're reaching kind of the limit of downforce that can be generated with today's regs, would it not pay them more dividends to pursue aero drag, considering they're one of the draggy-er chassises?

I mean, if we look at the law of diminishing returns, they can probably still reap a lot of returns from reducing drag. But then I guess that runs again the spirit of the Newey

[xpensive]

I'm following it alright.
...
Identify your ideal man.
Sign the guy.
Await the audit from your new appointment.
Act on said audit(ie new staff, tech or suppliers).
Wait for the developments to filter in to future projects.
...

I wouldn' formulate my recruiting strategy like that for a TD, this is me;

a) Identify the team's needs and the position's job-description and mandate.
b) Find the person who fits the bill and hire him/her according to a).
c) Give the TD free reign to act, still according to a), reporting up should
be on no more than an FYI basis, when this is where Barnard and Dennis had
their legendary rowls in the 80s.

I'm afraid that c) will be difficult to achieve with MGP's management structure.

[raymondu999]

That's pretty much what JET said; except JET said, "act on his audit" and you said "let them have free rein" which basically means, "do whatever he tells you to do"

[xpensive]

No it's not, you should perhaps read a little more carefully.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

So bell arrives and shortly after Mercedes have identified areas they can improve.

"taking the team to the absolute RRA limit" means mercedes are listening very attentively to what Bells diagnosis is.
Also it should be noted that Jorg Zander has a history of falling out with teams.
He lasted 6 months at Williams falling out with sam micheal, then joined BMW only to quit a little over 12 months later to join Honda.

Wily Rampf was livid in the manner he conducted the switch, I recall.

So the problem of the Brawn not giving enough freedom to a TD is not the issue here.
If anything, and judging by some decisions we have seen, perhaps the merc team have had too much freedom and it's bells job to reign this in and to translate ideas into performance.

Bell would never have taken the position if there was going to be a contrived system of working. The man does not operate like that and left Renault because of it.

[raymondu999]

I was just looking around, and it appears I was wrong about Rob Marshall and Bell; the mass dampener was a Marshall invention, not Bell

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Is he at Red bull now?

[raymondu999]

Rob Marshall is chief designer of Red Bull now yes. Along with ex-McLaren Prodromou and Newey

[marcush.]

Xs point was :
what is the job desription of a TD ? When Newey is chief technical officer ,Rob Marshall chief designer ,Brawn team principal and Mercedes is not even employing a TD for the best part of 2 years then clearly teams operate with different structures and responsibility divisions .
So you just don´t need a good technical director but someone who excells in those areas of urgent need in your company.

So what is the problem at Mercedes for example? they were late ,they started the year with quality issues ,and the car lacked performance .

In that case you need a wonder ,methinks.