dren wrote:lotus7 wrote:shelly wrote:Tombazis has a phd in aerodynamics, climbed all the steps in the windtunnel hierarchy and then became chief designer after a period in mclaren.
Costa is a mechsnical engineer who has become then deputy chief designer with byrne and then chief designer in couple with tombazis (I never understood who called the shots if the two disagreed).
It is a completely different background.
Byrne is a chemical engineer ....and that is also a completely different background
Chemical is quite far from the other engineering. Electrical, mechanical, structural, aero, etc are all somewhat related. Chemical is a beast in of itself.
the leap is not that far once you understand some basics in chemistry, thermodynamics and fluid flow.
In Chem Eng, fluid flow andthermodynamics is vitally important to understand multi path reactions in reactor vessels that house reformer processes.
the difference between a Mechanical Engineer and Chemical Engineer is that in 2nd year,the Chem guys focus much more on chemistry while the mechanical guys focus much more on Material Scince and Fluid Mechanics.
Both cover thermodynamics, and applied math.
Byrne's Chem Eng certainly helped him understand fluid flow but he learned his Race car specific skills on hi friends race cars before moving to Enland to sek out more formal employment in the motor racing scene.
He is especially gifted in visualising what he wants to achieve and has the ability to marry the fluid, thermodynamic and structural elements together to form a strong concept. His ability as a Chemical Engineer also was vital in driving the engine programme at Ferrari forward, just like he did for Ford when Benetton as their main customer team.
he is not a glamour F1 engineer and few people really understand how much he contributed to the teams that he worked for. One person who does understand Byrne's value is Luca Demontezemolo who has Byrne locked down good and solid in an "advisory role"
What that rally means is that he can work when he wants to or Luca wants him too and he can;t work for anyone else (which is more key).
Also Costa's main issue is that as a person he is too soft natured to be a really strong leader but he is one heck of an Engineer. He is massively responsible for realising a lot of Byrnes vision into a mechanical package. the leadership role of Technical Director was not suited to hi personality hence I said a few years back that Ferrari would suffer.
they have a lot of nice guys running the team now.they were excellent understudies, brilliant engineers but just lacked that strong take no prisoners attitude that the Brawn and Byrne team brought to the Scuderia.
Adrain Newey at Red Bull is another really strong character who should not be underestimated because of his soft spoken nature.
Way off topic now but I wanted to illustrate that some place a lot of value of the piece of paper carried by some "glamour" engineers e.g Tombazis.
Excelent at mathematics he is but also a personality that doe snot lend itself to strong leadership. At McLAren he simply did not fit in.
How the team of engineers works together, how their ideas for innovation is carried through into a project that may or may not end up on the car is far more important than the credentials of one person.
You can see, I'm not a native English speaker.
