Difference between positions in technical departments.

[dav115]

Hi,

I was browsing this page http://forix.autosport.com/8w/6thgear/e ... gners.html, which gives you a list of key Formula One engine people, sorted by team. I noticed in the legend that the three types of position listed are:
Technical Director
Chief Designer
Chief Engineer

For example, next to Ferrari 2007, you have Paolo Martinelli (TD), Gilles Simon (CD)
Reading this prompted me to wonder - What is the difference between these three different occupations? I was hoping someone on here with some knowledge of the engineering industry could shed some light on this, as I would be greatly interested to know

[donskar]

I'll kick this off, because I'm curious and hopeful someone can fill in my sketchy knowledge.

In an interview some years ago, Ross Brawn talked about what the titles meant at Ferrari at that time:

Tech Director - sets the overall design philosophy. Brawn used the specific examples of weight distribution and wheelbase. He was also responsible for the organization, scheduling, and build of the car.
Chief Designer - sets the overall design of the total car, but not detailed implementation
Chief Engineer - responsible for carrying out the detailed design (I believe you'd find "Chief Engineers" responsible for discrete areas of the car. John Barnard, for example, assigned front suspension on his Ferrari F1s to one engineer, gearbox to another, etc. Barnard would also turn over the car complete, but undeveloped, to Gustav Brunner, whose technical team would actually develop the car and - hopefully- make it a winner.)

The exact roles (and qualifications) for each title will vary from team to team. I look forward to more posts on this point! It adds some of the human element to the technical as pect of F1.