Ramifications and speculation around TD045 and how it affects team operations

[basti313]

It works a bit differently. They do not "learn" from these projects. You use the nonsense projects to get more efficiency.
Example:
- You could put one engineer on the aero of the F1 car at 40h per week.
- You could put two engineers on the aero of the F1 car at 20h each and the other 20h they do some boat or supercar without pressure.

In the cost cap you get two engineers for the cost of one. They can work 120% in the 4h per day on the F1 project and drink coffee and recreate in the other 4h. Generally you can only count 90% productive hours...so one would try to put non productive hours to the other project. So the second option is in the end much more efficient and gives you a broader range of smart engineers, thus, ideas.

This is why ALL top teams have their side projects. So it is nonsense to discuss cars like the Valkyrie or AMG One. This does not matter and the tech is simply different. It is just the possibility to pay double loan with some non-profit projects to keep more engineers busy.

Sorry for being blunt, but the real world doesn't work like that. People can't just go at 120% at their job in exchange for downtime, especially not if it's a job that requires thinking (for physical labor you might get some benefit). You can't just think at 120% speed. And similarly, trying to work 120% power at a computer isn't gonna be more efficient. Rather, it's more likely to introduce mistakes and you have to spend time finding and correcting those mistakes.

Now, you could get your team more relaxation/downtime with what you're proposing at the other project, and that can have some benefits, but that's still gonna lose you efficiency. Why?
- Because most tasks require coordination and exchange of knowledge, and you'll now have two people spending time having to get each other up to speed every time they swap, rather than having one person focused on the task. Also swapping can introduce mistakes if not all relevant knowledge is imparted in the swap.
- Because people differ in expertise and skill, you'll now have the person with the most expertise giving half his workload to someone with less expertise, compared to simply hiring the more experienced person and having him work full time on his task.

What you're suggesting may sound great in theory, but it doesn't work on practice. You'll be paying two wages instead of one (even if only half goes on the cost cap), and you won't be getting your moneys worth. You're gonna be worse off.

Have you ever worked on a project based job?
Of course it makes a huge difference which pressure each project has. And of course it makes 120% if you still think about the relevant project once you work on the other project.
Furthermore it is proven, that an employee on a 30h job is much more efficient than one on a 40h job. So if they just fill the pipeline with recreational jobs it has the same effect.

[Cs98]

What you're suggesting may sound great in theory, but it doesn't work on practice. You'll be paying two wages instead of one (even if only half goes on the cost cap), and you won't be getting your moneys worth. You're gonna be worse off.

Sounds like a great way of giving back that newly found profitability that has sky-rocketed the value of teams. They're not going to do that for some marginal theoretical efficency gain.

[SiLo]

It's probably better to think of the cost of time per employee to learn something new. Within the budget cap you are limited quite severely in that regard, but you could send an entire team of engineers and aero staff into something vaguely related but not F1 to learn a tonne of stuff and then just rotate them back with other staff.

All that learning used to be done by the F1 staff directly, now it's just moved outside a bit, but I doubt a lot of it has actually gone away.

[Cs98]

It's probably better to think of the cost of time per employee to learn something new. Within the budget cap you are limited quite severely in that regard, but you could send an entire team of engineers and aero staff into something vaguely related but not F1 to learn a tonne of stuff and then just rotate them back with other staff.

All that learning used to be done by the F1 staff directly, now it's just moved outside a bit, but I doubt a lot of it has actually gone away.

The problem with that is F1 is hyper-specific, particularly when it comes to aerodynamics. You take the front wing from the fastest car on the grid and put it on the slowest, that car isn't going to go faster, quite the opposite. And this despite the fact both cars look almost identical to a layman. So this notion that things that are "vaguely related" are somehow going to yield meaningful performance gains strikes me as naive. Unless these people are literally sitting on an "external project" and developing F1 parts, or running the F1 model in CFD, they're not going to come back with actionable information. They might learn general principles. But all of that general knowledge still has to be boiled down to something specific to mean anything in F1.

[basti313]

The problem with that is F1 is hyper-specific, particularly when it comes to aerodynamics.

Exactly this. On a usual project you would look for design challenges that are based on cost, production framework, etc...
In F1 you just try to squeeze the optimal solution into a very specific rule set.

[TFSA]

Have you ever worked on a project based job?
Of course it makes a huge difference which pressure each project has. And of course it makes 120% if you still think about the relevant project once you work on the other project.
Furthermore it is proven, that an employee on a 30h job is much more efficient than one on a 40h job. So if they just fill the pipeline with recreational jobs it has the same effect.

Yes i have. And it seems to me that you're confusing two different things.

Project based jobs work the way they work because, first of all, one person can only do so much work, so you need extra hands. And second of all, because projects typically need people with different expertise/skillsets doing different things, and everyone therefore have a unique role to play. If you have a project that, say, requires two technical experts, a computer scientist, a legal adviser, a financial controller and a motivator/supervisor, then obviously, any of these people missing will hurt the project, if not make it impossible.

But that's not what you're suggesting. You're suggesting that two people, with the same skillset, doing (more or less) the same thing, but working only half time, will be more efficient than one person doing the same task full time. That's not the same thing, and it's not gonna be more efficient.

The example project i gave above isn't gonna be better by bringing in two financial controllers working half time, because there will be a lot of time wasted for the second one to figure out what the first guy did the other half of the week.

The 30 hour work week is not a universally proven fact, and the science on it is still incomplete. The truth is that it will work in some cases, but not in others. Project based work is likely a case where it won't be specifically efficient for the reasons i mentioned in my last post, and it's also unlikely to be efficient in fields where you sometimes have to move and adjust really fast, and suddenly get things done on a tight schedule.

Also, you're not suggesting simply cutting people's time down, but having them make up for it on their own by being more efficient because of the extra rest. You're suggesting bringing more people in to compensate. That's not the same thing either.

[basti313]

Have you ever worked on a project based job?
Of course it makes a huge difference which pressure each project has. And of course it makes 120% if you still think about the relevant project once you work on the other project.
Furthermore it is proven, that an employee on a 30h job is much more efficient than one on a 40h job. So if they just fill the pipeline with recreational jobs it has the same effect.

Yes i have. And it seems to me that you're confusing two different things.

Project based jobs work the way they work because, first of all, one person can only do so much work, so you need extra hands. And second of all, because projects typically need people with different expertise/skillsets doing different things, and everyone therefore have a unique role to play. If you have a project that, say, requires two technical experts, a computer scientist, a legal adviser, a financial controller and a motivator/supervisor, then obviously, any of these people missing will hurt the project, if not make it impossible.

But that's not what you're suggesting. You're suggesting that two people, with the same skillset, doing (more or less) the same thing, but working only half time, will be more efficient than one person doing the same task full time. That's not the same thing, and it's not gonna be more efficient.

The example project i gave above isn't gonna be better by bringing in two financial controllers working half time, because there will be a lot of time wasted for the second one to figure out what the first guy did the other half of the week.

The 30 hour work week is not a universally proven fact, and the science on it is still incomplete. The truth is that it will work in some cases, but not in others. Project based work is likely a case where it won't be specifically efficient for the reasons i mentioned in my last post, and it's also unlikely to be efficient in fields where you sometimes have to move and adjust really fast, and suddenly get things done on a tight schedule.

Also, you're not suggesting simply cutting people's time down, but having them make up for it on their own by being more efficient because of the extra rest. You're suggesting bringing more people in to compensate. That's not the same thing either.

I am surprised by your perspective. It sounds like they are just doing a job and work some standard stuff away, drawing some bolts and doing standard calculations. Especially the example with the controller is a bit strange as it is completely the opposite of what a relevant aero engineer in F1 is doing.

We are in my company also working on the limits of possible engineering. I mean...of course there is work like producing part lists, wiring looms and so on, but this is not what I am talking about. I am speaking about the part that needs ideas, where the engineer needs to find new solutions, where he needs to think and is clueless 90% of the time.
Of course it is much more efficient if you have a higher number of engineers thinking about the impossible solution, brainstorming together and working out the optimum. This is not a bookkeeper's job I am talking about...

[TFSA]

I am surprised by your perspective. It sounds like they are just doing a job and work some standard stuff away, drawing some bolts and doing standard calculations. Especially the example with the controller is a bit strange as it is completely the opposite of what a relevant aero engineer in F1 is doing.

We are in my company also working on the limits of possible engineering. I mean...of course there is work like producing part lists, wiring looms and so on, but this is not what I am talking about. I am speaking about the part that needs ideas, where the engineer needs to find new solutions, where he needs to think and is clueless 90% of the time.
Of course it is much more efficient if you have a higher number of engineers thinking about the impossible solution, brainstorming together and working out the optimum. This is not a bookkeeper's job I am talking about...

I get your point, and it isn't wrong. Sometimes you need more people looking at problems, pooling creativity etc.

But my take on that is that, first of all, this often done by teams who have a slightly different set of skills, and second of all, this is something that quickly runs into diminishing returns. 2 people brainstorming a problem is better than one. 4 is also likely to be better than 2. But 8 isn't necessarily better than 4, and 16 is highly unlikely to be better than 8.

So unless you are already working in a very small team, i don't necessarily see the benefits outweigh the downsides. I'll concede that it's more complicated than i laid it out earlier, but I don't for a minute believe that your original take on why/how the F1 teams are doing it has any resemblance is truth.

To me, i think the teams have these alternate projects for the following reasons:
- Training/improving their staff.
- Retaining their staff, avoiding layoffs that would otherwise have been enforced by the cost cap, and preventing them from getting poached by their competitors.
- Making money outside of F1. These alternate projects have both revenue and marketing potential. For example, Adrian Newey said in his book that Dietrich made it very clear that Red Bull Advanced Technologies has to be able to stand on its own legs and be profitable. (https://imgur.com/a/Ckuy7ZP)
- MAYBE exploiting loopholes the FIA haven't figured out yet (can't rule out that possibility, but it carries a heavy risk if you ask me).

[Cs98]

The problem with that is F1 is hyper-specific, particularly when it comes to aerodynamics.

Exactly this. On a usual project you would look for design challenges that are based on cost, production framework, etc...
In F1 you just try to squeeze the optimal solution into a very specific rule set.

I still think your theory on why teams would do this is a reach.

To me it seems much more reasonable to think this is a simple question of redundancies creating opportunities. They don't want to lose all those people to someone else, so they might as well start a commercial project or another racing venture. Keep the competence in-house, make some extra money, increase the opportunities within the company for employees to climb and train. Keep senior engineers (like a Newey in the case of RB) happy. Allow for people who are tired of F1 to stay around doing something else, with a possibility of returning later. I suppose it is a bit like a rehab facility, sort of like you argue, but not on a short term basis. Not working 20 hours here and 20 hours there. More like, work a few years there, then come back. You can stay home, less pressure, less stress. And it's probably a profitable business at the end of the day.

[dans79]

But in reality I don't think any of these suggestions will stop people taking knowledge and experience in their heads from one job to another. That's the nature of experience. As long as there's no data or CFD work exchanged between the two entities you can't stop people moving within a company.

The goal isn't to stop people from gaining knowledge, it's to stop teams from gaining knowledge/an advantage outside the budget cap.

[dans79]

So this notion that things that are "vaguely related" are somehow going to yield meaningful performance gains strikes me as naive. Unless these people are literally sitting on an "external project" and developing F1 parts, or running the F1 model in CFD, they're not going to come back with actionable information. They might learn general principles. But all of that general knowledge still has to be boiled down to something specific to mean anything in F1.

Both scenarios can happen. If you are shipping off a junior staff member to learn concepts, then senior staff members aren't wasting limited time and resources teach them or reviewing their work. That has a lot value.

If you are shipping off senior staff members that already have the needed skills, then they can work outside of the cfd and tunnel restriction to solve very specific types of problems. when they come back to the team they can bring back free (to the team) knowledge of how to solve a very specific set of problems.

F1 aero is predominately Research, work, so the limiting factor is always the knowledge of the employees, and the limitations on CFD and Tunnel time.

[taperoo2k]

Yeah, they must have found something that was happening and decided to shut the door - so to speak. I wonder if that relates to rumours that some teams had staff working on other stuff and asked to clarify the roles of certain staff

I think it'll probably be a case of teams shuffling staff around F1 and outside projects, in other words a way to get around the cost cap in terms of wage bills and getting around the limits placed on R&D by the cost cap. I think one rumour had it that Newey was employed by Red Bull Advanced Technologies rather than by Red Bull Racing directly. Newey is currently listed as the chief technical officer for Oracle Red Bull Racing and Red Bull Advanced Technologies. While Christian Horner is the CEO of Oracle Red Bull Racing and Red Bull Advanced Technologies.

Well that was one of the issues with the cost cap breach, right?

I guess we'll find out the truth of the matter in due course. I mean if Newey used the hypercar project to inform the
RB18 and RB19 in some way, say the 3D shapes used on the floor? Not sure how the FIA could handle that one, given you can't force Newey to forget anything he may have learned from the hypercar project (his designs after all, if he owns the IP rather than Red Bull then fun times I guess). I expect Mercedes and Ferrari have probably been upto similar things, it sounds like this is a gaping loophole the FIA should have probably realised and closed before the cost cap era came in. Same old thing in F1 though, teams see a loophole and exploit for all it's worth before the FIA closes the loophole.

It works a bit differently. They do not "learn" from these projects. You use the nonsense projects to get more efficiency.
Example:
- You could put one engineer on the aero of the F1 car at 40h per week.
- You could put two engineers on the aero of the F1 car at 20h each and the other 20h they do some boat or supercar without pressure.

In the cost cap you get two engineers for the cost of one. They can work 120% in the 4h per day on the F1 project and drink coffee and recreate in the other 4h. Generally you can only count 90% productive hours...so one would try to put non productive hours to the other project. So the second option is in the end much more efficient and gives you a broader range of smart engineers, thus, ideas.

This is why ALL top teams have their side projects. So it is nonsense to discuss cars like the Valkyrie or AMG One. This does not matter and the tech is simply different. It is just the possibility to pay double loan with some non-profit projects to keep more engineers busy.

F1 teams are a 24/7 operation, to do what you suggest would require a lot of administrative heft to make it work so the production schedule for the cars isn't disrupted or delays key upgrades from reaching the cars. Even as I type this, facilities and IT staff in F1 teams are busy carrying out repairs, swapping equipment and rolling out upgrades to various infrastructure. This is the only part of the season when IT staff in F1 teams are allowed to take key systems offline to rollout new projects and hardware. Facilities and IT staff do get two weeks off but it's taken either before or after the shutdown.

As far as side projects go? They have two purposes
1. Generate income for the F1 team.
2. Develop technologies that can either be spun off from F1 or used in F1.
They are not there to keep engineers busy for the sake of it.

I guess what the FIA might be concerned about in terms of side projects like the Valkyrie, AMG project etc is the possibility that teams are gaining CFD and wind tunnel time by the backdoor alongside it being a way to get round the cost cap that covers the wages of somebody like Adrian Newey (he's not cheap). The FIA would be remiss if they didn't investigate this properly.

[Cs98]

So this notion that things that are "vaguely related" are somehow going to yield meaningful performance gains strikes me as naive. Unless these people are literally sitting on an "external project" and developing F1 parts, or running the F1 model in CFD, they're not going to come back with actionable information. They might learn general principles. But all of that general knowledge still has to be boiled down to something specific to mean anything in F1.

Both scenarios can happen. If you are shipping off a junior staff member to learn concepts, then senior staff members aren't wasting limited time and resources teach them or reviewing their work. That has a lot value.

If you are shipping off senior staff members that already have the needed skills, then they can work outside of the cfd and tunnel restriction to solve very specific types of problems. when they come back to the team they can bring back free (to the team) knowledge of how to solve a very specific set of problems.

F1 aero is predominately Research, work, so the limiting factor is always the knowledge of the employees, and the limitations on CFD and Tunnel time.

The training part can be true, but that's also non-specific to F1, and not outside the rules as I understand it. Projects like the AMG One engine is likely already doing this.

The rest I disagree. The aero problems of F1 cars are specific. Trying to re-create a solution on a completely different CFD model is going to be a nightmare, and might in fact lead you to the wrong conclusions. Which is why I said that unless they are cheating and sitting with F1 parts and models in CFD on an external project, I don't think it will yield any actionable solutions for F1. It might yield conceptual ideas that are very unrefined and will need the F1 team to spend time and money testing and eventually perfecting for the F1 car. But this to me is akin to hiring someone who is an expert at ground effect. You get general knowledge that might lead you to a design, not a ready made solution.

[TFSA]

Beyond the general discussion about the rules here, i think people also underestimate the importance of developing, retaining and securing knowledge in motorsport for the future.

In a discussion of this TD on the Sky Sports podcast between Karun and either Ted or Brundle (can't remember which of the two it was that week), the latter mentioned that talent retention in F1 is in a bad place. People are leaving the field for other jobs where they can apply their skills, and the cost cap is a part of that problem, because teams can't pay competitive wages anymore compared to other industries who aren't limited by the same budget.

Now that doesn't mean that the cost cap is a bad idea and should go. But if you at the same time are gonna limit teams abilities to employ and develop staff and train them, things will eventually start to look bad for F1 and motorsports. I think the people arguing that this training is employees is "cheating", are missing this point completely.

Now, i personally don't think this entire side-project thing is a problem to begin with, as long as only knowledge is exchanged, and no actual data, designs etc. for several reasons: i believe trying to police knowledge is both gonna be an insurmountable challenge, but is also fundamentally wrong to begin with, and will end up doing the sport more harm than good. But also because i believe that people who argue that you can use this to circumvent restrictions on CFD/Windtunnel are wrong (i refer to Cs98's great explanation above my post here which lays out why you can't just transfer that knowledge easily and make it applicable just like that).

But for the people who are convinced that this is a problem, i think we should be looking alternate solutions.

One idea could be for F1 to restrict 'gardening leave'-clauses and develop other rules that makes it easier for people to switch teams, and easier for teams to poach talent from each other. Teams spending all the time and money in the world training and developing their staff isn't gonna help them much, if they suddenly wake up one day and find that their staff has left for a competitor, bringing all their knowledge and expertise with them.

But limiting the ability for motorsports teams to train, retain and make use of staff, even if they must do so outside if F1, is a bad idea. We're gonna regret that long term. Now, there might be some small loopholes that should be closed off course, but that's about it.

[Rodak]

Sorry for being blunt, but the real world doesn't work like that. People can't just go at 120% at their job in exchange for downtime, especially not if it's a job that requires thinking (for physical labor you might get some benefit). You can't just think at 120% speed. And similarly, trying to work 120% power at a computer isn't gonna be more efficient. Rather, it's more likely to introduce mistakes and you have to spend time finding and correcting those mistakes.

This is true.
When I was doing cad mechanical design I found my useful creative time was limited to about three hours in the morning and by 10:00 I was done; I used to come in early so I would have time alone, as I found that useful. At that point I would transition to grunt work, reports, etc., as I didn't really accomplish much on the design side after that. A job that requires physical labor, especially repetitive actions, can be extended to longer hours with an increase in production (and boredom), but creative work can't be forced through longer hours.