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Stratman
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If he was good enough teams would be paying him...
F1 2019
- Thread starter Stratman
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If he was good enough teams would be paying him...
Good point, well made...
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Agreed. I was thinking if Racing Point become Aston Martin then they could influence the driver line up ie get rid of Lance Stroll but reading it again, it seems his father is looking at buying a stake in Aston, which means Lance will stay. Lance is one of those drivers who belongs in Formula E
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Stratman
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And admit they would veto Toto’s move to running F1 thereby negating Hamilton’s reason for moving from MB...
aj_clc
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Toto and Ham to Ferrari , 2021 ?
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Toto has bigger plans than joining Ferrari. He'd like to run the whole show and I think he'd do a good job.
I can't see him moving away from Mercedes for any other post.
Chrishazle
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No, Toto and Ham to stay at MB for at least 1 more season to take Schumi's record away from Ferrari!
I think that Toto running F1 would be a positive move, but if Ross is still there as technical chief, then there could be some difficulties due to the mistrust between them during the Brawn to Mercedes transition of the Brackley team. If that were overcome, then I can’t think of a better pair to move F1 forward.
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LH is runner up in SPOTY 2019 out of these 6
Chrishazle
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Bookies favourite Ben Stokes won it.
Interesting chat with my son recently who runs the machine shop in a major composite manufactures supplying the F1 industry.
Amongst their regular clients are Red Bull, Mercedes, Toyota (WEC) etc, so he gets to see many of the new car parts long before anyone else.
They recently had a Williams chassis in for machining, as Williams own big CNC rig was down. "Looks like the same chassis they had 10 years ago" he said somewhat surprised. The front running teams have moved the game on significantly in the last few years.
Without the constant investment in facilities, people and infrastructure it should come as no surprise that there is a gap between the leading 3 teams and the rest.
Even if you do have the investment (Renault?) there is no guarantee that you can bridge the gap without a continuity of all the factors that make great teams.
Obviously, funding plays a major role, but catching up on a decade of under investment, and then beating those fortunate to have that resource is going to be a mountain to climb.
Amongst their regular clients are Red Bull, Mercedes, Toyota (WEC) etc, so he gets to see many of the new car parts long before anyone else.
They recently had a Williams chassis in for machining, as Williams own big CNC rig was down. "Looks like the same chassis they had 10 years ago" he said somewhat surprised. The front running teams have moved the game on significantly in the last few years.
Without the constant investment in facilities, people and infrastructure it should come as no surprise that there is a gap between the leading 3 teams and the rest.
Even if you do have the investment (Renault?) there is no guarantee that you can bridge the gap without a continuity of all the factors that make great teams.
Obviously, funding plays a major role, but catching up on a decade of under investment, and then beating those fortunate to have that resource is going to be a mountain to climb.
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That's both interesting and sad.
Williams diluted their engineering efforts (effectively taking their eye off the F1 ball) when they got themselves involved with Renault road cars back in the early 1990's. The big difficulty in competitive fields of engineering is getting back up to the front of the pack when you've let yourself fall behind: the incremental effort required to catch up is hugely expensive in terms of people and resources, and all the time you're trying to catch up, those who you fell behind are still moving forwards. Often it's impossible to make a big enough investment fast enough, and you become doomed to falling further behind as your customer base loses faith and your revenue stream diminishes.
I used the example of Williams F1 many times during my career to illustrate why it would be wrong to reduce investment in leading edge R&D, sometimes winning the argument, and sometimes - regrettably - losing it with totally predictable consequences.
Well, there are only 3 teams currently spending more than the provisional cost cap proposal......
most can still only dream of that scale of funding.
I guess it will be up to the individual teams to decide where they spend their money.
grober
MB Master
Following the investment line a little further into the team "software" the old adage "nothing breeds success like success" means that successfull teams, when well managed!!!, can attract, retain and even fire the best personel around. One seeming contradiction when developing new winning ideas might be the number of design ideas you can actually afford to reject/leave on the drawing board before selecting the best as a good measure of resources available to a team?
Bellow
Hardcore MB Enthusiast
For the life of me I cannot remember which team - or of it was F1 even - but I recall hearing of a team so far ahead of the curve that they would explore all ideas then stack the unused ones. Then, midseason when a rival team would appear with some development or other and all the other teams would rush to copy - sometimes successfully, sometimes not - always with some cost in time expended, the leading team had already tested the idea, stacked it, and knew exactly if it was worth reviving and applying to their effort. And when it wasn't , it ploughed on on its intended path without distraction. I think it was probably McLaren at its peak.
Yes, I suspect that was McLaren in the late 80’s.
It is really like that with tyre suppliers in Motorsport. There are now only a few disciplines which have multiple suppliers, but back in the day, if you could afford Michelin, then you would use them.
Whenever a competitors’ tyre looked like it might beat their tyre, they would just reach up to a higher shelf and say ‘try that!’
.....and invariably it did.
Have you noticed who sells the most expensive tyres for road and race cars?
It’s that continued investment in technology that you pay for.
You can’t drive your Chiron at 300mph on just any tyre!
It is really like that with tyre suppliers in Motorsport. There are now only a few disciplines which have multiple suppliers, but back in the day, if you could afford Michelin, then you would use them.
Whenever a competitors’ tyre looked like it might beat their tyre, they would just reach up to a higher shelf and say ‘try that!’
.....and invariably it did.
Have you noticed who sells the most expensive tyres for road and race cars?
It’s that continued investment in technology that you pay for.
You can’t drive your Chiron at 300mph on just any tyre!
Bellow
Hardcore MB Enthusiast
Yep, I suspect it was McLaren in that period also.
Its strategy also had the effect of wrongfooting rivals who couldn't understand why they (McLaren) weren't pursuing the same and thus doubts were sewn. They covered everything!
Its strategy also had the effect of wrongfooting rivals who couldn't understand why they (McLaren) weren't pursuing the same and thus doubts were sewn. They covered everything!
