My question on Mr Newey...explain it to me.

Saw this before the race this past weekend. Newey standing and staring at the SF-24.

 

No one guy is solely responsible for a cars success.

Newey perhaps comes up with the overall concept, but as mentioned there is a team of hundreds of people that spend countless hours turning his vision into something that works together. Then of course all the developments of the original idea.

It's crazy to me that people think Newey designed every bit of the car and when they look at complex aero designs that they think it came from his brain. He has a very impressive aerodynamics team that come up with ideas, shapes and geometries that work to his overall vision.

I'm sure we will never know who came up with the initial idea for a lot of revolutionary designs we've seen on his cars over the years, but he certainly gets all the credit. And fair enough, he deserves his credit. It isn't by accident that he is chief designer or technical director of so many championship winning cars.

 

post the respective figures plz.
only confirmed numbers plz.

 

Rory Byrne and his team definitely was better than Newey and his team(s) until the dream team dismantled. One could argue that the 1998 F300 was already a better chassis, but the Mercedes power plant was the class of the field that year. 1999 similar, but I for sure say the F399 was the better chassis. Irvine was contending for the title and he was nowhere near Hakkinen. MSC would have won the title easily. 2000-2007 were still his babies. 2008 he was still there in a consultant role. Even though the 94 and 95 Benetton's won, I still believe the Williams were better cars. At least faster.

 

There are thousands of people, but there is a lot of specialization going on. Most engineers are given extremely specific tasks and they have to focus on these tasks and on the interfaces that are relevant to them. As you go up in hierachy, people are supposed to see more and more of the bigger picture - but obviously those people are not thousands anymore, but a couple of dozens.

In the end building an F1 car is a non-trivial optimization problem where the quality of your solution ultimately only becomes apparent on the race track; some engineers have incredible foresight though. And obviously the budget cap is rather hard to control.

When it comes to the importance of aero:
If you write down the balance of longitudinal forces on a car, you will see why aero is the single most important factor for going fast.

 

Disagree.
F300 wasn’t the class of the field.
Pretty closed to be lapped in Melbourne for the opening race.
Mercedes engine was brilliant and lighter compared with the Ferrari but the MP4-13 was a hell of a chassis !

 

We'll never get official numbers. But the math is out there, I forget the formula but at speed it's calculatable and the three I just named are all very very close in power.

 

Doubt anyone thinks "Newey designed every bit of the car". To me it is somewhat comparable to Jobs and Apple. No Jobs, no Apple. No Newey vision, no ideas, shapes, and geometries. Of course I think Newey's engineering input to the end product, not just a vision, is much greater than Jobs ever was. But Newey could not overcome the powerplant deficit. Once the pp was on pare with other teams then the vision and engineering insight of Newey made the difference (along with a great driver).

 

I would agree the MP4-13 was the better car. The reason why I say one could argue the Ferrari had the better chassis, or at least equal, is because the Mercedes was the class of the field for horsepower. Talks were it was quite a margin ahead of everyone. The broad torque curve allowed them to use the smaller and more efficient 6 speed gearbox over Ferrari's 7. Then of course the tire war. I don't know if Bridgestones were the better quali tire or not, as Bridgestones claimed the first 13 poles. But it did seem more often than not that the Bridgestones was the more stable race tire.

So if we remove McLaren's significant horsepower advantage and possible tire advantage (at least on average) then it's plausible that the F300 chassis was on par or better than the MP4-13... at least aerodynamically. When looked at as the entire package, the McLaren was certainly better.

 

Some people on the F1 instagram accounts literally see any fancy aero design and immediately think Newey came up with it all.

I would love to know which ideas came out of his mind, or what his initial blue prints look like for each car he designed. It's a shame F1 is so secretive.

 

My guess is that Newey sets the objectives of the car as Technical Director and others in the team design it. He has to take credit for the direction. He did have a stable team & some notable people working under (above) him, Oatley, Durant. Lowe, Head etc

 

Neweys genius is in the aero domain. The most obvious recent examples of this are the switch to the current regs in 2022. The current formula is an aero formula. Newey is the aero GOAT. His cars have been, literally, a country mile ahead of everyone else. As time goes on, the teams performance converges, and yet RB is still maintaining its massive lead over the rest. There has never been another designer like Newey. He is a natural. The next gen of designers are all massively dependent on computing. We should celebrate his achievements and enjoy the fruits of his work whilst we still can. I know Max does!

 

Would love to know that too But it could also be something that someone else thought of, such as layering carbon in a certain way so that it passes all the flex tests but at speed starts to bend...and that giant Newey brain somehow dreams of a concept that takes all that flexi business into consideration to became whatever weapon he dreams off. The 2010s RB years for example...even with the ****ty Renault engine to be that dominant was quite amazing.

Newey is very good at taking ideas from others and improve it to suit his own. I'm sure he's thought of stuff himself too. Who is to say that whichever engineer dreamt up the first flexi wing in F1 didn't get it from elsewhere...

I still find it a massive shame that the MP4-18 never saw the light of day, IIRC it was the RB7 that took many ques from this car in the end and that was rather successful.

 

Well that idea, though not specifically related to auto racing, is at least 50 yrs old. So someone thought of that while Newey was still getting in trouble in primary school.

 

Exactly my point

 

The next generation of flexi wings will be in F! soon and it possibly circumnavigates the rules by changing shape, or parts of it, at critical points and returning back to its original shape when stationary.

 

I haven't heard this. Do you recall any of the features that transferred over? The two cars are completely different so I can't see the relatable bits between them.

 

This to me is a good example. You say he is the aero GOAT and that he designed the floors of the 2022 and beyond cars. How do you know this? Sean Whitehead is the head of aerodynamics at Red Bull so wouldn't he be the guy more directly responsible for the aero we see on the car? As a manager, I am sure he mostly overlooks the thousands of designs by the numerous aerodynamisists within the the aero department.

I believe it's more along the lines of Newey says the floor is the most important part and devotes the majority of his resources to that area. He likely wanted the downwash design and always wants the smallest radiator inlets and the biggest undercut possible. So he has a very fundamental drawing that he sends off to the various departments under him. Cooling department work on radiators that can fit his design and yet still sufficiently cool their PU. They surely work hand in hand with the aero department as the radiator will need to be a certain size and the aero team will fine tune the body work around the radiators and everything else under the body. Sean Whitehead would of course allocate most of his team's hours on the floor and diffuser to maximize the efficiency and downforce of the most important aero feature on the car.

So while I think Newey comes up with the idea and general design, I think the parts seen on the actual car do not come from his mind most of the time.

 

The stopwatch does not lie.

If 10,000 other people can do it, well - send one to Maranello so they can go faster then RB. So Easy, wonder why Vasseur/Elkan hasn't done it yet? Right? They get paid millions too! That said, wonder why the other 8 teams haven't done it too? Perhaps some sort of collective ignorance.

You imply some cheating, ala Ferrari hacking fuel sensors, always plausible in F1. Until evidence is shown, it remains pure speculation, yes yes, in today's world, theories/innuendos pass as FACT, so I understand where you're coming from.

 

I think Sean Whitehead was in diapers when Newey was involved in ground effect floor design in the 80's. How many current heads of aerodynamics for F1 teams has that background? Newey's personal historic insight gives the team a huge starting advantage in the design process.

During the B-777 development there was an 'experienced' (i.e. older) designer who created the design concept for the TE flap linkage. He didn't do the design of any of the actual parts, but he did (rightly) receive all the credit for the design.

 

During the Schumacher championship years, Byrne's Ferraris were consistently beating Newey's McLarens. What was the difference? Engine power? Schumacher's ability? Something else?

 

To take a more recent example, prior to 2022, Merc won every year of the hybrid era except one. By general agreement, the dominant factor was the Merc PU. And guess what - the only car that managed to beat them, in the very last year of that formula, was a Newey designed aero monster, powered by a reasonable but not stellar Honda PU, and driven by the genius driver that is Max.

 

All I need to know is that after his departure neither Mclaren nor William won a WCC..

 

Can't deny McLaren were fabulous cars in 07 and 08. Though I question how much of that is down to stealing Ferrari's successful ideas. They also had a great car in 2010 and in 2012.