Engineering moves

Engineering moves Right now, the focus in F1 is on the production teams. They are busy making parts, building up cars and making sure that everything is properly crash-tested befor the pre-season testing gets underway. The launches will start in around three weeks from now, and the testing will begin in Barcelona on February 27. The second and last test will kick off on March 7. The design teams are currently in a fairly slow period and some of the designers and technical directors will be off relaxing, perhaps skiing, before the work begins again. The aerodynamic crews are still going, but they will run for as long as the rules allow them run. Making sure that staff are properly rested in quite an important element in F1 these days, although technical directors and chief designers do not all go to all the races. The brunt of the travel is taken by the race teams, the track engineers, the support teams and the drivers. Thus, what teams really want is to have designers who are rested and ready to go so that work can begin in a month or two on the 2018 cars. The designers will want to have a good look at the 2017 machinery, of course, to see what everyone else has been doing, but it will not be long before the first fingers start tapping on the first mice, creating CAD files for the 2018 cars. The chassis themselves generally stay fairly similar from one year to the next and it is the aerodynamics and the vehicle dynamics (and thus suspension design) that move with the times. But everyone is pushing all the time and one needs to keep up with all the latest ideas. A lot of effort at the moment is going into hydraulic systems which improve chassis stability. Teams will tell you that the aerodynamics are the most important thing, but driver confidence is right up there too. Give a driver what he wants and you can make a leap forward that would cost tens of millions in the grinding development process. The men who decide which departments get what resources are the key players in the modern age. The more money you have, in theory, the better the car you produce, because everyone gets the budget they need. The brilliance in F1 design today is not necessarily achieved with a drawing board, although it is hard to fault Adrian Newey, but it is the technical management that is key. Small teams know that if they put limited resources in the right places, then success will follow. At the moment F1 is still an engine formula (which it should be) but clever aerodynamics and clever vehicle dynamics (and also clever understanding of the tyres) are also important, as the different engines edge closer to one another in terms of performance. Luca Montezemolo said this week that Mercedes started work on its 2014 engines in 2007, but I think he might have been taking a little too much Kool-Aid, given that the rules were not formulated for a very long time after that. I guess the former Ferrari chairman needs to try to explain why Ferrari screwed up as badly as they did… While all this is going on, Paddy Lowe will be returning to Williams, where his career started, at the start of March. This means that Mercedes signed off on his gardening leave because it needed Valtteri Bottas and because it already has James Allison signed up. He left Ferrari in July last year and normally nowadays one needs 12 months of paid gardening leave to stop an engineer going elsewhere. Given that Mercedes F1 is about 30 miles from his home, this is not a big deal. The interesting point is whether or not Williams will give Lowe a share of the team. The has price has rising for a while, which suggests someone is buying, and I would suggest that it is probably the family, in order to give Lowe shares without diluting their control. That would be logical. I fully expect Lowe to join the Williams board of directors, but his title will be really interesting… It may not help much in 2017, but Lowe’s arrival and the use of Mercedes engines ought to lift Williams in the years ahead… Please think about donating to the Jill Saward Fund, which aims to continue the work of my sister Jill Saward (1965-2017), who campaigned to help rape victims and to reduce the number of rapes in the world.
from F1 Center Engineering moves Right now, the focus in F1 is on the production teams. They are busy making parts, building up cars and making sure that everything is properly crash-tested befor the pre-season testing gets underway. The launches will start in around three weeks from now, and the testing will begin in Barcelona on February 27. The second and last test will kick off on March 7. The design teams are currently in a fairly slow period and some of the designers and technical directors will be off relaxing, perhaps skiing, before the work begins again. The aerodynamic crews are still going, but they will run for as long as the rules allow them run. Making sure that staff are properly rested in quite an important element in F1 these days, although technical directors and chief designers do not all go to all the races. The brunt of the travel is taken by the race teams, the track engineers, the support teams and the drivers. Thus, what teams really want is to have designers who are rested and ready to go so that work can begin in a month or two on the 2018 cars. The designers will want to have a good look at the 2017 machinery, of course, to see what everyone else has been doing, but it will not be long before the first fingers start tapping on the first mice, creating CAD files for the 2018 cars. The chassis themselves generally stay fairly similar from one year to the next and it is the aerodynamics and the vehicle dynamics (and thus suspension design) that move with the times. But everyone is pushing all the time and one needs to keep up with all the latest ideas. A lot of effort at the moment is going into hydraulic systems which improve chassis stability. Teams will tell you that the aerodynamics are the most important thing, but driver confidence is right up there too. Give a driver what he wants and you can make a leap forward that would cost tens of millions in the grinding development process. The men who decide which departments get what resources are the key players in the modern age. The more money you have, in theory, the better the car you produce, because everyone gets the budget they need. The brilliance in F1 design today is not necessarily achieved with a drawing board, although it is hard to fault Adrian Newey, but it is the technical management that is key. Small teams know that if they put limited resources in the right places, then success will follow. At the moment F1 is still an engine formula (which it should be) but clever aerodynamics and clever vehicle dynamics (and also clever understanding of the tyres) are also important, as the different engines edge closer to one another in terms of performance. Luca Montezemolo said this week that Mercedes started work on its 2014 engines in 2007, but I think he might have been taking a little too much Kool-Aid, given that the rules were not formulated for a very long time after that. I guess the former Ferrari chairman needs to try to explain why Ferrari screwed up as badly as they did… While all this is going on, Paddy Lowe will be returning to Williams, where his career started, at the start of March. This means that Mercedes signed off on his gardening leave because it needed Valtteri Bottas and because it already has James Allison signed up. He left Ferrari in July last year and normally nowadays one needs 12 months of paid gardening leave to stop an engineer going elsewhere. Given that Mercedes F1 is about 30 miles from his home, this is not a big deal. The interesting point is whether or not Williams will give Lowe a share of the team. The has price has rising for a while, which suggests someone is buying, and I would suggest that it is probably the family, in order to give Lowe shares without diluting their control. That would be logical. I fully expect Lowe to join the Williams board of directors, but his title will be really interesting… It may not help much in 2017, but Lowe’s arrival and the use of Mercedes engines ought to lift Williams in the years ahead… Please think about donating to the Jill Saward Fund, which aims to continue the work of my sister Jill Saward (1965-2017), who campaigned to help rape victims and to reduce the number of rapes in the world. http://ift.tt/2krgfsg