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The problem with Adrian

FEATURE BY MAX NOBLE
10/03/2015

Adrian Newey is nostalgic for the days when a designer had room to be creative. And judging from comments to my Good-bye Horseless Carriage article, readers appear nostalgic for a time when, you know, it was just 'better'. Some team owners and managers are nostalgic for the days when it all seemed so much more exciting and fun. In general fans are nostalgic for the days when it was about the racing and one could afford to attend. Bernie is nostalgic about nothing, for him nothing significant has changed, and he organises his world as he wishes, so why would he be?

Looking back misty-eyed is all well and good for fire side chats when one is recalling the excitement and vigour of being twenty-one. It's not so accurate for guiding a path into the future unless one has a very clear recall of what really happened all those years ago. One need look no further than the stock market to see the impact of a million degree educated people all trying to know the future by reading the past. White collar gambling some like to call it. Warren Buffet approaches it as a Michael Schumacher of the investment world, clinical natural genius with the tools he needs at his command, while Bill Gates is more of your Ayrton Senna type, a brutal natural talent who knew he was in the right place at the right time and used every ounce of his mighty talent to brutally crush the opposition.

Anyway, to return to the curious case of the golden boy / black sheep / enigma that is Adrian.

Formula one does not exactly have a problem with the way the cars look. It's why they look this way. Christian Horner knew this when he chuckled in a news conference and inferred the FIA did not realise what it was about to see on the front of the new generation cars. Christian knew the laws of physics. Christian knew what was going to happen because he knew Adrian. And Adrian knew because... well, he's rather smart.

From the start of the championship until the late 1980s the capability of the drivers exceeded what the cars could provide them. Then all of a sudden (starting with that wonderful adaptive Williams) the cars were capable of far more than the drivers could handle. What was a responsible governing body to do? After the tragic death of Ayrton Senna it was very clear. All possible active and passive safety initiatives were on the table, none were off.

So the rules went from keeping the playing field level, ensuring all were competing in similar machines because the engineering might of the day could fashion no better, to actively limiting the capability of those machines. We had lifted the veil on the world of shy Ms. Physics and, for the first time in history, had the engineering capability to build and run machines with the capabilities to run well within the laws of physics, yet far beyond the skill and reaction time of the humans piloting them.

Yet still the rules were for a time somewhat flexible. It was next the turn of the wind tunnel and the computer to provide engineers with new tools to tease physics and delight drivers and public alike. Brilliant engineers used these new found tools to extract yet more performance from these increasingly complex beasts. Ms. Physics is a modest lady, but if you ask her politely she will, with 100% consistency, do precisely what you expect. One simply needs to treat her right, know what polite questions to ask, and then behave precisely as she dictates.

Haunted by the ghost of Senna, the FIA had a trigger finger for shooting down any really progressive idea faster than one could say "ground effect". Yet during this entire time Adrian found inventive, creative, simply brilliant ways in which to maximise the beast within the bounds of the rules. Yes occasionally one of his great ideas would be outlawed (his brilliant chase down of the game-changing Brawn double diffuser being but one) but even when banished, each idea had still moved the game forward. And in so doing driven the FIA to refine and tighten the rules for the next year. They had a blunt instrument, and less creative minds, while Adrian was leaping from concept to concept with Ms. Physics dancing in his arms. The FIA, like the last drunk at a wedding left staggering behind dancing alone, is quite unaware of how foolish it looked.

The cars could not circulate too fast. Pure and simple. Ask a commercial pilot the most hectic part of a flight, and barring unplanned incidents the answer will be take-off and landing. It's not when a plane is travelling fastest, but when the speed and coordination of aircraft control is at the most critical that the most delicate of touch and the swiftest of minds is required. Again lady physics is not fickle. Given the same set of circumstances the plane will react precisely the same way each time. It is the speed and control for the current conditions and the end state one desires that guide repeatable action. The right speed for the condition ensures safety.

So how do the FIA set this bound of "Fast enough, but not so fast as to be unsafe?" Usually on lap times. The goal being to keep them around the same year to year. Scientific? Not really. Simple measure easy to understand? Yes! Ah, that sounds like the FIA we know.

I always felt Max Mosley was a very bright chap who was nearly as smart as he believed he was. In matters of negotiation and law he was beyond reproach. A master of the Machiavellian plan-within-a-plan who could make his victim thank him for the time taken to destroy their own plans. Such a loss to the off-track action, JT should consider bringing him in as a personal mentor to spice-up current FIA behaviour.

Anyway! Dear Max never fully got the engineering mind set, or the fans mind set. Sure he understood far more than most, but in a couple of key areas he missed the real drivers of behaviour. For engineers the drive is to do something really clever that delights, amuses, and does the job better, faster, and "more clever" than the engineer in the other team (company/division/lab... whatever) and naturally "wins" by whatever criteria matter to the engineer. Colin Chapman was this sort of person. It had to be an innovation for the sake of winning. So dear Max set about enforcing seemingly arbitrary rules about height, weight, extension past mid-line, height above ground plane, and each time the engineers, foremost being Adrian, spent long gleeful nights simply working to the utter edge of the allowed limit, because they could.

At the same time fans were embracing multi-valve engines. Fuel injection had moved from mechanical to electro-mechanical to software controlled. Carburettors had gone the way of the Monty-Python parrot, and simply put, the technology was amazing! This was cool for all. The fans knew cutting edge technology was driving their cars to new levels of performance, and they could see Adrian and other leading engineers in Formula One dancing on the edge of what was possible. The technology ignited the engineers and excited the fans. Something Max appeared to never fully accept.

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READERS COMMENTS

 

1. Posted by Max Noble, 24/04/2015 6:24

"@SideGlance - It's a fine line between entertainment and sport. A sport must entertain, not all entertainments are sport...

I agree without F1 those engineers would be in other areas... what other areas? We do not know. Could Adrian have furthered the battle against Cancer? We will never know. Has he delighted and thrilled many with his efforts (some of whom I"m sure use F1 to relax when not battling Cancer), while having a career he has loved? I think so.

I am gathering my thinking on Toyota for a possible future article. Never has a commercial engineering great fallen so short of what they should have achieved. They hammered the WRC and most other motorsport areas in which they competed. Their road cars - while often boring for the driver - are safe, reliable, affordable, and comfortable transport.

Without question one needs 'enough' money in F1, and then sheer genius and a team fired by passion to achieve... and then that Pixy Dust that Schumacher made all his own for so many years. I can only guess that at some point Senna gifted him a jar."

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2. Posted by SideGlance, 02/04/2015 5:49

"Don't forget that f1 is NOTHING but entertainment, and any technological advancements created in F1 could easily have been created in the science lab, and if no F1 existed, those very good engineers would be working for just those labs seeking new tech.

But to be honest, working for a lab may not be as fun or exciting as applying your hard effort/research to something like F1 or sports, competition exists in both the non sports and sports world alike, and usually the basis boils down to money - but then most things do don't they?

It was thought that Toyota may have spent as much as $US 1 billion (1000 million for the brits) in F1 w/o a championship of any sorts and yet at the time their engines were as good as any.

So not just money wins in F1, it is the skills, leadership, teamwork and excellent driving that win, rules seem to hinder/limit the creativity of the engineers, imagine what might have been if really unlimited ?"

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3. Posted by testa rossa, 21/03/2015 14:33

"YOU are right ape, this was the stupidest thing the rich teams did because in the last proposal the money for drivers and a star designer were not included in the costcap ,so they could keep an advantage by luring the best drivers and designer. But they were afraid for competition from the unknown newcomers and the small teams. Funny that some people blame the Fia now.
"

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4. Posted by ape, 21/03/2015 13:59

"People seems to forget that Max had the perfect proposal to limit the money ( costcap ) and free the technical rules so the geniuses as Adrian could come up with magic inventions.
This proposal was shot down by the rich teams lead by Montezemolo and the bosses of Adrian at that time."

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5. Posted by MKI, 17/03/2015 11:48

"Certainly a brilliant piece; one does though have to weigh up how F1 fits into 'sport' in general and motor sport in particular. If the circuit equates to 'the sports ground' and the car equates to 'the ball', it is clearly way more complex to regulate than say tennis or any other 'classic' sport. If one is also intending to draw a live audience there has, surely, to be some consultation between the main players - regulators, the venues hosting the game and those responsible for supplying the participants. A sense of history might also be useful. The removal of any iconic corner (e.g. Silverstone's Woodcote) - one that gave such pleasure to driver and spectator alike without, apparently, any formal process seems self defeating.

From a driver's perspective F1 is like no other 'sport'. The impetus for them has shifted from entering a competition to win it to simply getting there. Most of them will never win. The model is unique. Is it sustainable in its current guise? Time will tell. What I do know is that aerodynamics have had a profound influence, largely negative in the overall scheme of things. As you say, Adrian has indeed posed some problems!"

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6. Posted by FormulaFun, 14/03/2015 12:52

"Another very well written piece, Max.
Your views as an engineer offer good input from another persepective on F1 in general.
I think we should pay close attention to what will happen in the future of F1 as the racing itself gets more intense with the new gifts of technology "

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7. Posted by cricketpo, 14/03/2015 2:40

"Average lap time may seem crude to an engineer such as yourself @Max noble but it is certainly a black or white issue as far as legislator's are concerned, easily recorded and not open to interpretation. Without adherence to this sort of physical limit the day of the robot racer comes a step closer. Drivers are currently subjected to unimaginable forces whilst cornering, braking etc. If lap times were allowed to develop we would soon be at the limit of human endurance and computers that don't require a pesky blood supply to be maintained to the brain would be the only way to get a car around the track. We are in an era where our technology allows us to make engineering that can do things our physiology cannot cope with. The rule book these days is surely aimed at keeping the racing within the realm of human endeavour"

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8. Posted by Max Noble, 13/03/2015 0:37

"@cricketpo, it's an interesting point you raise. Just how tight to make the rules to challenge and not strangle innovation? My feeling is that currently the rules are too tight, and based on a crude concept (maintaining average lap time). If you want a conspiracy let's assume JT is making the rules to keep Michael in the record books as long as possible. I believe the lap record at Melbourne still belongs to Michael for a 2004 flyer. All that innovation to lap slower than an eleven year old car...? Now I've typed that the lap record will fall this weekend of course...!
Making Ms. physics female is pure artistic license. I agree that between Mother Nature, and Father Time it could have gone either way.
"

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9. Posted by flashpete, 12/03/2015 23:31

"Great piece!

Perhaps an answer would be to make the Poacher the Gamekeeper.

(and to cricketpo, in you first line it's principle, not principal)"

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10. Posted by cricketpo, 12/03/2015 22:26

"@ max noble - I have two problems with your main argument. Firstly how does a mathematical principal obtain a gender bias? Secondly the rule changes are mostly designed to keep the cars within an envelope of fairness. I don't agree that looser rules would allow more inventive engineering - in fact I think it is the opposite. Engineers have to be much more ingenious to provide a beneficial racing edge on their opponents if the rules are much tighter. F1 is and always has been a tight framework of rules and regulations - the clue is in the name. If too much variation in car design is allowed then it will not be a race of like against like. There is motor sport out there for you if you wish to see the motor sport equivalent of David vs Goliath but that is to miss the point of Formula 1. The concept was to provide a type of racing where by and large the cars are much the same and the difference is in the driving. The rule changes reflect the speed with which engineers find ways of going faster. The fact that engineers are looking at design changes that shave parts of a second off a lap just shows how much and how far the sport has developed. Don't forget that when F1 started engineers were scratching their heads as to whether it was possible to break the sound barrier. And now we have been to the moon and built a plane that allowed you to drink champagne and eat canapes whilst travelling at mach2. "

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11. Posted by Martin B, 12/03/2015 19:48

"Nicely written piece! Only two things wrong with F1 today, the FIA and Bernie. I wish no ill will upon the man but when Bernie dies (he won't retire) we will hopefully see change for the better.
"

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12. Posted by Vinicius, 12/03/2015 19:22

"@Max Noble. I see your point! It is valid, but I think some things doesn't fit in today's motor sport because it drives the costs up. Another thing is that most of the ideas were already put and banned after success (which is correct for me if it increases the costs), so the "banning" plan naturally increases the limitation. But I agree that F1 must stay as the pinnacle of motorsport and technology, I just think that cutting costs and keeping the good races we have is more important today. Sadly that determinates a dominating team without much room for another teams recovering during the season, but it happened in the past too.
Yesterday Christian Horner said about a wind tunnel ban to cutting costs, I think he was a bit ironic, but is it a good idead which merges both our opinion. Would open the aerodinamic ideas again (if FIA wants) without increasing costs that much - I think CFD is cheaper."

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13. Posted by Max Noble, 12/03/2015 9:14

"@Vinicius. Some of us public love the workings of engineers. And my drive with this article is to say we will get more excited engineers, more fascinating (diverse) solutions on track, and as a result more dramatic racing if the rules were framed to bound the engineers based on physics (maximum weight, maximum fuel use for example) rather than you must use our ECU, our definition of regenerated power, and our aerodynamic limits. Mazda had their wonderful triple rotor Le Mans racer banned after one win. A similar story for GE trying to use gas turbines in racing. These engineering innovations enlivened racing. But rather than letting the other engineers and Ms. physics define how to chase them down, they were banned under the rules. I for one would love to see Lewis in a quadruple rotor ethanol sipping racer going wheel to wheel against Alonso in a gas turbine beast! What a battle of men and machines that would be! As it is we are heading toward the FIA controlled World energy recovery Corolla World Cup!"

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14. Posted by Redphyve, 12/03/2015 9:08

"It's when I read articles like this that inflames my desire to write half this well."

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15. Posted by Vinicius, 12/03/2015 3:53

"The public don't want to see engineers working, just expects good racing. Would be disappointing to see engineers making rules, because for sure they would want to make challenges for them and not to think about the public entertainment. Oh wait, they already do that with V6! Less power and less sorrow for engineers please."

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