Vodafone McLaren Mercedes is delighted to announce that Sam Michael will join the team as Sporting Director from the 2012 season onwards. With 18 continuous years in the industry, Sam is a hugely experienced Formula 1 professional.
Post here all non technical related topics about Formula One. This includes race results, discussions, testing analysis etc. TV coverage and other personal questions should be in Off topic chat.
raymondu999 wrote:His role is sporting rather than technical so right now I don't think he'll be designing anything. Maybe he'll talk of how he made the Williams gearbox with Tim Goss or Neil Oatley over lunch or something but not much else.
His role: "specific responsibility for the development and management of the team's trackside operations." That COULD mean McL will slowly integrate him into a technical role. Certainly seems an evolutionary change for McL -- not revolutionary. No one would ever ID Michael as another Newey.
I am praying they make him decide the race strategies. Anybody but the monkeys that they use now.
Monday I interviewed Sam Michael and while he was very forthcoming in regards to his leaving Williams and heading to McLaren he was very diplomatic as well.
Williams say they took 2 years to develop their gearbox for this year.
There will be conceptual thinking going on now that can't be developed in time for the 2012 car that'll not appear until 2013.
For example McLaren tested a blown wing in Monaco 09 as a prelude for the F Duct in 2010. I imagine that blown wing concept was probably first conceived in the development of the 09 car (ie in winter 08), 2 years before it appeared on the 2010 car.
Also I imagine Newey was playing with the idea of the pull rod and EBD for a few months before the design team started working on the detail, hence first thoughts could have been 18 months before it appeared on the track? Actually, I suspect Newey probably had the thought of the pull rod and EBD** from a decade or so, he was just waiting for the regs and technology to catch up!
** We know the EBD is a long standing idea because it was tried when Newey was at McLaren.
richard_leeds wrote:For example McLaren tested a blown wing in Monaco 09 as a prelude for the F Duct in 2010. I imagine that blown wing concept was probably first conceived in the development of the 09 car (ie in winter 08), 2 years before it appeared on the 2010 car.
That wasnt anything F-duct related but the central slot in the rear wing which by 2010 everyone ran and got extremer and extremer. Nothing f-duct related.
I recall McLaren commenting that the F duct idea was first tried during FP at Monaco, but no one noticed because other teams thought it was a conventional slot. At that point it was passive, but they realised it needed to be driver activated, hence the delay until 2010.
Yes you are spot on about the Monaco passive F-duct. The active version was ready to go on the 09 car but as they were not in the championship hunt they saved it for 2010 so rivals wouldnt have all winter to copy it.
I find it curious that someone who was a Technical Director for ten odd years then moves to another team where he is in anything but a technical position.
