Thread title is an oxymoron, yes, we've all heard the joke before. Seriously, do F1 teams employ someone whose full time job is to gather information about other teams, their practices, their technology? Or is that role shared by people already performing some function for the team, with intelligence gathering as a secondary responsibility?
Thats a really interesting question. Having thought of that before myself, I would imagine at least some teams would have spies or what not. Unfortunately if Ferrari has any, they sure didn't do a good job this year. I would think they aren't full time spies, I would imagine they have some other role in the team as well. Mark
Being employed in a competitive industry myself (although at a much larger company) I don't think WE have spies, but my employer does maintain a database of competitive information and plans that are, as far as I can tell, mainly (if not completely) gleaned from legitimate sources and internal speculation. They do solicit information from the employee base, but (officially at least) do not condone theft of intellectual property from competitors. This isn't the same as racing, but I'd expect that the F1 teams have no more than someone attached to the team to photograph competitors cars and scrutinize them for interesting innovations and follow media reports. But that's just my extrapolation from my sensibilities and what I've seen in my industry.
Not necessarily on staff, salaried, full time employees, but perhaps spies in the true sense. If I was able to recently meet two for-hire corporate spies in the matter of a week, then I suspect there's a hell of a lot of it going on in F1.
Interesting thoughts. Obviously someone responsible for keeping track of the other teams would have a title other than "Team Spy" but their role may be a director of intelligence of sorts. Given a budget like Ferrari's, I would bet they employ a handful of people who try to blend in with the paddock crowd and report interesting things that go on in the other garages. I'll have to re-read Steve Machett's book again. I remember him discussing that from an operational efficiency standpoint, the teams absolutely try to see what the other teams are doing and copy innovative techniques. Maybe I should pop onto the Speed TV forum and ask this question! Maybe Mr. Matchett would address that question on the air, he often mentions the discussions on that forum (like the LED lights behind the steering wheel of the Ferrari this season).
if there are some of these people on the f1 teams and especially ferrari i would say screw bridgestone and micheline and lets get a real tire in f1. PIRELLI!!!
Yes. A few years ago teams would be seen pulling their cars into the garage and pulling the doors down after practice and qualifying much to the FIAs dismay. The reason? Photographs of the cars. It was learned that other teams were employing photographers to take digital pics of the others cars in the pit lane. Once the specific distance of the photographer was worked out they would then use the pic to reverse engineer the aero configuration of the car. Wing width, depth, wing angles, suspension geometry all could be worked out on a grid once you got a few good close pics. I also remember the brew-ha-ha over some computer discs that were supposedly stolen from Ferrari ending up at Toyota. This is just one example. Cloths are thrown over wings in all level of motorsport in order to keep the angles of attack and Gurney Flap size from other competitors. Any team that doesnt steal a good idea is going to be quickly relegated to the back of the grid. It didnt take long after Tyrell re-introduced the raised front wing to good effect with Jean Alesi at the wheel before the other teams were rushing their own version out on the track. Evolve or die. Keeping an eye on your competitors is just one form of evolution.
This whole thing seemed to explode in the late 90s. Remember all the talk/frustration by the teams over the extensive photographing of the cars? My favorite was the whole rear-brake-steering controversy when the McLarens were seen with only the rear discs glowing. When one of the drivers, DC I think, parked the car at trackside after a failure a photographer (Sutton?) stuck his camera into the cockpit and shot the pedals, revealing an unorthodox brake pedal and thus exposing and leading to the death of "brake steering." On top of that, most if not all of the teams have made it known that they employ ex-military intelligence personnel to counter the spy efforts.
