pasta_maldonado wrote:All of us here can agree that Newey is so good at his job it is disturbing - most of the teams he worked for have won the title with one of the cars he designed. There is also a huge team of talented people worked behind the scenes on the RBR package. The thing is, Newey isn't the most intelligent man in the world (meant to be taken literally, not figuratively), and the likes of Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes also have hugely talented and intelligent people working for them. These people are also hugely talented (otherwise they simply wouldnt be there), so what is it that Red Bull have or do that the other designers can't seem to? Is it they don't understand the secrets of the Red Bull? Is it because they have made a design mistake in the last couple of years? Newey and his design team alone can't be the sole reason behind Red Bull; I doubt very much that the other designers continue to work down routes that aren't working when confronted with the ideal specimen of these regulations: the Red Bulls.
These are highly intelligent people we are talking about - what do they lack that Newey possesses? What technique can't they master that Newey can? How can the other teams consistently design cars that are so much weaker than the Red Bull?
Well, here's my assessment.
I'm not familiar with the current administrative and technical structure at Ferrari, but a major factor in their relatively uncompetitive form since 2009 must be the institution of the in-season testing ban. Considering that prior to 2009, Ferrari, out of all of the frontrunners, were probably the most dependent on in-season testing for cardevelopment, the ban certainly had a severe impact on their technical department, who no longer had the luxury of endlessly piling experimental components on a car. Moreover, due to their prioritization of in-season testing, their wind tunnel and simulator technologies were inevitably neglected, tools which subsequently became the primary instruments for effective development and Ferrari's underdeveloped facilities had to have viciously compromised the efficacy of the technical department.
McLaren, on the other hand, probably possess the best facilities and technological infrastructure in the business, in addition to some of the best engineers and aerodynamicists. Moreover, unlike most other outfits, McLaren have adopted matrix management systems, sourced from the aerospace industry, in order to maximize efficiency, subsequently systemizing the vast majority of the development process, which should have ensured highly consistent outputs and guaranteed performance. Theoretically speaking, McLaren should be consistently winning championships or at the very least seriously challenging for ones.
Unfortunately, systems are never perfect, and McLaren's overreliance on its theoretical models, much like Ferrari's overreliance of 'brute force' physical testing, have produced inconsistent and erratic performance at times, with this year's MP4-28 a classic case in point. Whereas the theoretical model produced a 'perfect' car, which should've offered a significant quantitative leap in performance over the MP4-27, variances in the calculations led to a serious disruption in the holistic harmony of the vehicle, with the confusion subsequently exacerbated by correlation issues with the simulator and the wind tunnel, leading to further misdirection, and we all know the rest. It didn't help that this year's technical regulations were effectively static, leaving McLaren's engineers even less room to work with.
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