the incubus wrote:
Uhh, He can, and get this… HE "IS"
I find it interesting that you don't see the contradiction in what you wrote, in that it totally coincides with what I said. Why don't we have an "epic facepalm" emoticon?
I am a Production Manager and while my job is technically the technical director, I oversee EVERYTHING that leaves here which means I say how things need to get done, in what fashion and who needs to do what to get it all done in a timely fashion. I literally engineer and oversee the entire process from beginning to end and once everyone is done, I put all their pieces together and create the final product personally so I can then preflight everything to ensure all is 100% before being sent out for production. About the only thing Newey doesn't do is build the cars himself. And while he's out and about traveling to races with the team, he cannot physically be there to oversee all the processes at the factory, rest assured the staff is carrying out his orders under Prodromou's supervision. HOWEVER, when time permits Adrian is at the factory, working to further develop his cars, both present and future and whenever possible he is int he wind tunnel with the staff testing and analyzing data. Newey is very hands-on when it comes to his work and nothing else will do.
then why the extra help, and extra salaries? to do monkey work, press enter and wait for the simulation and deliver back the results?!
you may be right but from my experience i don't see it possible, i have worked on designing a race car during my school years and still am on a separate project (not a race car) i have worked as a team head, member and technical director during my time and it is just impossible, just setting up the big picture and keeping track of that is difficult enough.
If Newey does what you say he does then how on earth do Redbull out develop teams, Newey is on track Thursday to Sunday if a race is every 2 weeks then that leaves him exactly 9 days to analyse the data, know what to do, check the simulator design and build. and that is just a single part and teams do often bring more than one part. Newey doesn't use CAD, he prefers his drawing board to test things out and i believe it is impossible for him to do the tech director part and head of aero part, each aero part goes through around 10 iterations till it reaches him he can't be doing that!
Packaging yes, direction yes, Ideas for improvement yes, design path yes, development path yes.
Design and analysis (be that part or data) impossible IMHO.
He is the brains behind RBR success, but he doesn't do everything he just does his job better than most.