Ramifications and speculation around TD045 and how it affects team operations

[AR3-GP]

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.

Wouldn't the analogy then be that you are booked in F1 from 7-10am, and then your non-creative hours and salary are booked designing soup cans for a massive amount of money to bypass the salary limitations of the F1 cost cap?

Who are F1 to argue that you can't be paid 200,000 a year to design soup cans?

There are ways to bypass the salary limitations imo, exactly as described above.

[TFSA]

Wouldn't the analogy then be that you are booked in F1 from 7-10am, and then your non-creative hours and salary are booked designing soup cans for a massive amount of money to bypass the salary limitations of the F1 cost cap?

Who are F1 to argue that you can't be paid 200,000 a year to design soup cans?

There are ways to bypass the salary limitations imo, exactly as described above.

To what benefit? There's still only 5 days in the work week, and he can still only be creative 3 hours a day. So that's 15 hours of creativity each week.

All that means it's that you're paying someone else to do the grunt work, which still needs to be done.

This is still not a loophole, and honestly: the arguments trying to make it into one are getting kinda ridiculous at this point. And I'm not saying loopholes don't exist, but i see nothing major, and certainly nothing that is worth a major crackdown on after this TD. There's really no benefit to what you're suggesting. It's just a waste of money and efficiency.

[AR3-GP]

Wouldn't the analogy then be that you are booked in F1 from 7-10am, and then your non-creative hours and salary are booked designing soup cans for a massive amount of money to bypass the salary limitations of the F1 cost cap?

Who are F1 to argue that you can't be paid 200,000 a year to design soup cans?

There are ways to bypass the salary limitations imo, exactly as described above.

To what benefit? There's still only 5 days in the work week, and he can still only be creative 3 hours a day. So that's 15 hours of creativity each week.

All that means it's that you're paying someone else to do the grunt work, which still needs to be done.

This is still not a loophole, and honestly: the arguments trying to make it into one are getting kinda ridiculous at this point. There's really no benefit to what you're suggesting. It's just a waste of money and efficiency.

this is not the same issue as the one where people learn things outside of F1.

It's the idea of being able to retain you from a salary point of view, without it becoming part of the F1 team's budget.

It's part of why James Allison was suddenly off doing boats and why the guy from RB was in the power unit division. The one flaw is the RB guy got bored, and wanted more F1 car work, so he went to Mclaren.

[dans79]

It's part of why James Allison was suddenly off doing boats and why the guy from RB was in the power unit division. The one flaw is the RB guy got bored, and wanted more F1 car work, so he went to Mclaren.

that's not why he stepped back.
https://wtf1.com/post/james-allison-giv ... y-from-f1/

James moved to the far less-track-based role of Chief Technical Officer in mid-2021, and in his first interview since returning to the role, he explained the reasons why he had to step away at the time.

Talking on F1’s own F1 Nation Podcast, it was suggested that he was very much done with the role in 2021. He replied: “That was very real. I don’t know how much your listeners would care to hear this, but a lot of that goes back to the long and very tragic shadow cast by my wife dying.

“And being lucky enough a few years later to meet somebody else, who at the time was living in France and working in France and had all her life in France and had done for 20 years or so.

“When she kindly, some would say foolishly, agreed to come and cast her lot in with me so that we could live together, she was giving up an awful lot. It seemed a little unfair from my point of view to cast her adrift and say, ‘thanks for coming over to England, I’ll see you five minutes a week.’

“Stepping back from the frontline role of technical director allowed some space for our relationship to flourish that would’ve been tough otherwise. But that was over two years ago now that Chloe moved over.

“And she has some roots in this country now, being her own thing that doesn’t depend on my face, so it’s much more believable, much more possible now, to do this than it would’ve been two and a bit years ago.”

[AR3-GP]

It's part of why James Allison was suddenly off doing boats and why the guy from RB was in the power unit division. The one flaw is the RB guy got bored, and wanted more F1 car work, so he went to Mclaren.

that's not why he stepped back.
https://wtf1.com/post/james-allison-giv ... y-from-f1/

James moved to the far less-track-based role of Chief Technical Officer in mid-2021, and in his first interview since returning to the role, he explained the reasons why he had to step away at the time.

Talking on F1’s own F1 Nation Podcast, it was suggested that he was very much done with the role in 2021. He replied: “That was very real. I don’t know how much your listeners would care to hear this, but a lot of that goes back to the long and very tragic shadow cast by my wife dying.

“And being lucky enough a few years later to meet somebody else, who at the time was living in France and working in France and had all her life in France and had done for 20 years or so.

“When she kindly, some would say foolishly, agreed to come and cast her lot in with me so that we could live together, she was giving up an awful lot. It seemed a little unfair from my point of view to cast her adrift and say, ‘thanks for coming over to England, I’ll see you five minutes a week.’

“Stepping back from the frontline role of technical director allowed some space for our relationship to flourish that would’ve been tough otherwise. But that was over two years ago now that Chloe moved over.

“And she has some roots in this country now, being her own thing that doesn’t depend on my face, so it’s much more believable, much more possible now, to do this than it would’ve been two and a bit years ago.”

You're only looking on the surface. The timing of his "epiphany" is right when the cap started. Allison certainly has been thinking about his homelife long before the end of 2021. The budget cap just helped speed things along. The budget cap forced Mercedes to look at cutting down the number of employees. Allison already was feeling like he was past his sell-by date. This is what Allison actually said at the time:

"I firmly believe that people have a shelf life in senior roles in this sport, and I have chosen to step away from my role as Technical Director in order to pass on the baton at the right time for the organisation and myself," said Allison.

https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433 ... -reshuffle

This is pretty much as a result of Merc going through a big pruning due to the cap. Allison figured he should make way.


It's a bit like when Nico decided to retire in 2016. He'd been neglecting his personal life for years...it was only after a trigger event (the title), that he decided to quit F1.

[Zynerji]

Wouldn't the analogy then be that you are booked in F1 from 7-10am, and then your non-creative hours and salary are booked designing soup cans for a massive amount of money to bypass the salary limitations of the F1 cost cap?

Who are F1 to argue that you can't be paid 200,000 a year to design soup cans?

There are ways to bypass the salary limitations imo, exactly as described above.

To what benefit? There's still only 5 days in the work week, and he can still only be creative 3 hours a day. So that's 15 hours of creativity each week.

All that means it's that you're paying someone else to do the grunt work, which still needs to be done.

This is still not a loophole, and honestly: the arguments trying to make it into one are getting kinda ridiculous at this point. And I'm not saying loopholes don't exist, but i see nothing major, and certainly nothing that is worth a major crackdown on after this TD. There's really no benefit to what you're suggesting. It's just a waste of money and efficiency.

I will do 2 hours of tomorrow's work laying in bed tonight before I sleep. Then I let my subconscious chew on it for the next 8. When I get to work, my first 3 hours have mind blowing productivity.

How many hours did I work for that output?

This is why it will never, ever, ever work the way they are doing it. I made this clear when it all started...

[TFSA]

this is not the same issue as the one where people learn things outside of F1.

It's the idea of being able to retain you from a salary point of view, without it becoming part of the F1 team's budget.

It's part of why James Allison was suddenly off doing boats and why the guy from RB was in the power unit division. The one flaw is the RB guy got bored, and wanted more F1 car work, so he went to Mclaren.

I'm aware these things are slightly different.

But you also outlined yourself why it doesn't work: Because people have actual dreams and aspirations about what they want to do with their life and careers.

So again, i fail to see what the problem is. I think people here are way too focused on overpolicing the cost cap, coming up with all sorts of different imaginary scenarios that are trying to make something out as a big problem, despite the fact that it likely is only a small problem, or not a problem at all.

And as i mentioned a few posts ago it's important for motorsports to keep our talent pool around and develop it. The cost cap is an obstacle to that, and we are losing talent to other industries. Teams being able to retain and pay people outside of the cost cap isn't a loophole - it's a necessity. Otherwise the talent pool will quickly start to dwindle.

Are there gonna be some issues and small loopholes we'll have to deal with along the way? Undoubtedly. But it's better to deal with them when they pop up, rather than trying to create a draconian ruleset ahead of time to deal with imaginary scenarios. That's certainly only gonna do more harm than good.

[dans79]

I'm not sure why some of you keep going back and forth about hours, as far as I'm aware almost all the relevant staff are salaried employees.

[hollus]

Don’t go around in circles, please. When you have said what you had to say, don’t say it again. Reading through the repetitions is tedious.

[mzso]

So what if a team sends a bunch of its staff on a racecar project, that has open wheels, uses an MGU-K, has a shaped underfloor wit strakes and guides the air with a sidepod?
But is definitely not an f1 project, because the strakes are too many, the sidepod is to wide and so are the wings by several milimeters, etc. And all the engineers will explore all sorts of concepts there. And then go back to designing the F1 car. Or not even that just keep exploring, and the F1 staff will look at it, only for curiosity's sake, of course.

[Stu]

So what if a team sends a bunch of its staff on a racecar project, that has open wheels, uses an MGU-K, has a shaped underfloor wit strakes and guides the air with a sidepod?
But is definitely not an f1 project, because the strakes are too many, the sidepod is to wide and so are the wings by several milimeters, etc. And all the engineers will explore all sorts of concepts there. And then go back to designing the F1 car. Or not even that just keep exploring, and the F1 staff will look at it, only for curiosity's sake, of course.

*cough* Ferrari *cough*

[Stu]

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ryan-vel ... member_ios

…and Mercedes are ‘at it’ as well from the look of the link.

Everyone seems to be doing it!

[dans79]

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ryan-vel ... member_ios

…and Mercedes are ‘at it’ as well from the look of the link.

Everyone seems to be doing it!

How does an engineer playing in cad during his personal time mean Mercedes are at it?

Given his comments, it sounds more like his project was as much about making a parametric model as it was anything else (not a simple task when it comes to an object as complex as a car).

This is a CFD baseline model, with watertight and parametric surfaces for ease of modification, while maintaining high surface quality. Both the rulebook, books and research papers have been used to aid my design as I evaluated and tested different concepts and aerodynamic direction.

[Just_a_fan]

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ryan-vel ... member_ios

…and Mercedes are ‘at it’ as well from the look of the link.

Everyone seems to be doing it!

Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? A graduate who is playing around with the rule book for LMPh is the same as the great Adrian Newey and an entire team building a real car. Red Bull must be quaking in their boots.

[Stu]

Is CATIA a home PC CAD system?
I suppose that would depend on how deep your pockets are?

But the point of my post was to show how cloudy this TD is in reality.

Using ‘work’ tools away from work as a way to learn & gain knowledge is a net benefit, but how do the FIA determine what is inside & outside the regulation for accounting purposes?