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Showing posts with label
8. F1 Team Management Structure.
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Showing posts with label
8. F1 Team Management Structure.
Show all posts
A Formula One team on the move is an awesome sight. Getting the team from place to place and feeding them along the way is a big responsibility that falls to the truckies and the catering staff.
Articulated trucks, which double up as technical debrief rooms, contain the cars. Other trucks contain the mobile palaces that form the team�s HQ during a race weekend. These unfold to create �buildings� containing every facility and luxury a team may need, including kitchens that the catering staff uses to feed the whole team and guests throughout the weekend.
So complex is the manufacturing and the movement of a team from test venue to factory to race in all sorts of combinations that logistics managers are employed to streamline the whole thing. These people use a technique called critical path analysis, which splits tasks into key operations and defines where a reduction in time for one element will be translated into a reduction in time for the entire task. This is not always the case. For example, a quicker heat treatment for a suspension component could simply mean that the heat treater is waiting longer before the next component is supplied to him.
The information technologists can form up to half of the number of people employed by a team. Computing power is an intrinsic part of a Formula One team. In its most obvious form, computers are used to record and transfer data from the car to the team in the garage during a race weekend, via telemetry. But telemetry is just one branch of the IT department. Computer programs are used throughout the team�s operation in design, engineering, manufacturing, development, and racing. Some of these programs are bought in; others are developed in-house in an attempt to gain a competitive advantage over rivals. A top team employs several hundred software specialists.
Long before a full size car is built and put in a wind tunnel, a scale model of it has to be built. This model is then put into the wind tunnel to assess the design�s potential. Different noses, wings, underbodies, and other aerodynamic details are also built in model form first. The models can be anything from 20�60 per cent scale, and they must be stiff enough for the aerodynamic load not to deform the body and thereby skew the data. These models are built by highly skilled model makers.
Computational flow dynamics (CFD) is the computerised study of how fluids behave, and air is classed as a fluid for the purposes of aerodynamics. CFD experts mainly aid the aerodynamicists (explained in the section �Chief aerodynamicist� earlier in this chapter) by studying in detail predicted airflow over key parts of the car. By studying computerised renderings ideas can be tested without the time and expense of actually making the parts. If the ideas don�t work, they can be discarded without ever having bothered the production department.
Some say that one day CFD will replace the wind tunnel and that whole cars will be designed using just the computers � and the aerodynamicists and designers of course! This day is a long way off. At present, no computer is powerful enough to do all the calculations, even for a relatively small part, and many of the results are extrapolated from behaviour in key cells. But detail designs, like wing mirrors or front wing endplates, are currently being designed using only CFD. The technique is also used in predicting oil and water flow in engines and radiators.
A team of mechanics is assigned to each car and another team to the preparation of the spare car. Their roles are split between engine, chassis, gearbox, and hydraulics on each car, and they don�t interchange responsibilities. Each is a specialist in his own area. There is also a tyre man whose is responsible for washing and stacking the tyres for each driver and each practice, qualifying, or race. Selected mechanics also double up as the pit crew during pit stops. Overseeing and co-ordinating all these people is the chief mechanic.
The team manager�s job is to coordinate the activities of the mechanics, engineers, and drivers in order to ensure that everything runs as it should do and to represent the team at the track in any sporting query, either in lodging a protest against another team or defending his own team from a protest. Some years ago the team manager would be next one down in the team hierarchy after the boss but the explosion of technical specialists � and chiefs to coordinate them � means this is no longer the case.
At the track, each driver has his own race engineer. Between driver and race engineer, they try to find the best set up for the car on the day. The driver and his engineer communicate even when the driver is on the track. The race engineer and driver work hand-in-hand with a tyre engineer, supplied exclusively to the team by the tyre manufacturer. In some teams, the race engineer makes the call on what the driver�s race strategy is going to be � whether he fuels once, twice, or three times and at what intervals. At other teams this decision is made by the technical director or engineering chief. Still others have strategists.
The manufacturing side of producing a Formula One car is highly complex and very critical. A huge number of different manufacturing disciplines need to be brought together in the most efficient way possible, and everything has to be on time. This is the job of the production or factory manager. Working for him are a team of fabricators, machinists, tool makers, welders, and assemblers. The production manager may have risen from these ranks himself, or he may be a former chief mechanic who got sick of the travelling or whose family have grounded him!
Some teams manufacture their own gearboxes and therefore have their own team of transmission designers and fabricators. But even those that buy-in their gearboxes from specialist manufacturers have engineers who specialise in the mating up of engine and transmission.
The engine design chief oversees the design of the engine in much the same way that the technical director oversees the design of the rest of the car. The chief engine designer � that is, the person actually designs the engine � is not necessarily the same as engine design chief who will be a technical manager overseeing the department, including the chief engine designer!
The accuracy and repeatability of the wind tunnel is essential for the aerodynamicists to know how good or bad the team�s car is. Setting up a wind tunnel is a highly complex business and the top teams have someone whose job it is to engineer the tunnel itself
Some teams separate out the design and application elements and appoint a chief of engineering to oversee how designs are translated into reality. This person � such as Renault�s Pat Symonds or Williams� Sam Michael � often plays a strong managerial role during a race weekend.
New materials and technology and new ways of using existing technology come from the R&D (Research and Development) department, headed by the chief of R&D. Investing heavily in research and development invariably translates to lap time on the track. The more inventive minds, who might go off at a tangent too readily to make a chief designer, may nonetheless make a great R&D man.
The chief designer is the person who has to come up with an overall layout for the car that allows everything to fit and be adequately cooled whilst giving the aerodynamicist the necessary scope for generating efficient downforce. Essential to utilising the aerodynamic forces is the task of coming up with a structure that is stiff enough to withstand them � another job of the chief designer. Reporting to him is a team of designers and structural analysts. At least one team rotates between two chief designers so that one works on next year�s car without the distraction of developing the current one and then goes on to develop his car when it becomes current, leaving the other designer to initiate the next in the sequence.
Aerodynamics really determines the ultimate potential of a Formula One car. Even if a team sets up the car just right, it�s never going to shave whole seconds of lap time, only fractions of that. But the difference between a good and bad car aerodynamically can easily be whole seconds. That�s why the chief aerodynamicist carries the heavy burden of responsibility on his shoulders. The calculations are so involved and microscopic that he (or she � Williams currently has a female aero chief) depends on a whole team of aerodynamicists who work beneath to figure out the details, come up with new components, and try them out in the wind tunnel.
The chief aerodynamicist is primarily interested in the overall effect. The aerodynamic performance of a car is expressed in its lift:drag ratio � how much downforce can be had for how little straightline speed drag. The chief aerodynamicist is concerned with this above all else.
The technical director�s job is part-managerial, part-technical. He invariably is a former designer or aerodynamicist, but he rarely gets a chance to actually design stuff in his role as technical director. The technical director is a rare breed: a nutty professor with a core of steel and a real flair for organisation. He sets design objectives and targets and ensures that they are met. He could just as easily be sourcing a new material and going to the team boss for budget approval as he could be brain-storming on an aerodynamic problem. In many ways the technical director is the key to the success or failure of a team. Without a fast car, a team goes nowhere.
Without the technical organisation and a technical director�s guidance, a team is never going to come up with a fast car. Much of the great Ferrari turnaround of fortunes from sad underachievers in the early 1990s to record-breaking world beaters a decade later has been attributed to the organisational and technical knowledge of Ross Brawn, the team�s technical director since 1997. Because of his crucial role in the success or failure of the team, a technical director can command a very big salary � sometimes higher than the driver. A ballpark figure is around $2 million per year, though one technical director is rumoured to make as much as $8 million. But taking the big bucks means he must deliver. This isn�t a job for those looking for long-term employment security.
An engine supplier also has its own technical director, ensuring its Formula One programme�s technical progress runs smoothly. In those teams that build their own engines, the team�s technical director also has reporting to him the chief of engine design. So complex is the whole business that there can be two levels of technical management above the guy who actually designs the chassis or engine.
Chief designers, aerodynamicists, and research and development bosses all report to the team�s technical director. The following sections explain their roles on a Formula One team.
The commercial director or manager is usually a man behind the scenes who oversees sponsorship deals and the terms of commercial or technical liaisons. He must have cold eyes of steel with dollar signs on them. The heads of the finance and accounting departments report to him. Even this definition is a generalisation that applies mainly to the independent teams � but not always! Within the factory teams, the commercial director role is normally filled by someone from within the parent company because most of the finance is actually sourced from the car producer itself.
Then again, at Renault F1, much of this role is taken by MD Flavio Briatore, the team boss. There are no set rules of team structure in Formula One. The commercial director (sometimes called the head of marketing or the marketing manager) usually plays a fundamental role in attracting sponsors to the team and sets up the structure necessary to look after them. He also usually determines which space on the car equates to how many millions of dollars.
Each team has its own unique management structure. Broadly speaking, however, most teams are divided into two key areas: commercial and technical. A commercial director and a technical director usually each report directly to the boss (see the section �The Boss� for information on who the big bosses are). Ferrari has an extra role of sporting director, although this merely identifies the man, Jean Todt, who is effectively the team�s boss at the track. Emphasizing how these terms are not interchangeable between teams, Jaguar Racing has a sporting director too � John Hogan. But Hogan�s position is purely commercial, and his role very much that defined by other teams as a commercial director. There�s an important distinction between the independent teams (who rely on partnerships with manufacturers to supply their engines) and the factory teams (who build their own engines). Manufacturers such as BMW and Honda, who act only as engine suppliers, have their own team bosses, technical directors, designers, chief engineers, and so on. Manufacturers such as Toyota and Renault, who have their own teams, incorporate these roles into the overall team structure.
