FIA Thread

[AR3-GP]

Is there anything that stops a team from employing someone for 6 months out of the year on F1 task? and then the other 6 months in an applied sciences division working on non-F1 task which are not reportable to the budget cap? Would this be a way to pay them a large salary to "Retain" them, without actually having to report the bulk of this salary under the F1 team's budget cap?

In other words, could you offer employees eye watering salaries to do non-reportable, non-F1 task for half of the year, in order to be able to take advantage of their F1 expertise for the other half of the year?

Also, how do team owners extract the earnings of the F1 team? Could a team owner not in theory take team earnings and use them to operate a subsidiary which is just a holding company for employees they want to retain, where this company does vanilla things like consulting in other high performance industries?

[vorticism]

This should be a trend for many teams (i.e. corporations), for two reasons: the companies want to grow which entails new markets, and limiting what can be spent within F1 wouldn't necessarily be taken as a reason to downsize. What's known as not keeping all your eggs in one basket. F1 as side project isn't new. Williams have a long standing non-F1 technology arm. Mclaren make supercars. RB have multiple unrelated markets they act within; food, sport, engineering services. Strulović owns AMF1 & part of AM, which given where AM seem to be headed will provide synthesis. Ferrari might be the prime example of using in-house motorsport and road car engineering to inform one another--of course this is part of their marketing.

[Just_a_fan]

In other words, could you offer employees eye watering salaries to do non-reportable, non-F1 task for half of the year, in order to be able to take advantage of their F1 expertise for the other half of the year?

Yes, so long as what they do away from F1 doesn't involve information useful to F1 (be that direct R&D or some otherway of obtaining informationbeneficial to F1).

If you want to pay them lots of money to design sail boats, or gliders, or more efficient ways to grow tomatoes, then fine. If you want them to work on an exclusive ground-effect track car, then not fine.

[AR3-GP]

I was inspired by a comment in a different thread. Are F1 teams allowed to buy other F1 teams or shares in other F1 teams? Would the expense to buy shares of another F1 team be considered part of the budget cap? If one F1 team entity purchases and absorbs a second F1 team in the middle of a season, would the cost cap accounting implode?

[AR3-GP]

I heard an interesting comment which I thought would be worthy of discussion in this thread:

The FIA should not permit teams to work on next year's car before a certain date each year.

RB was cited in this argument as it's rumored that they have taken a very early start on next year's car due to their advantage (although it should be noted that it's likely also a result of the development restrictions). Even without accounting for RB's tunnel penalty, the 1st place WCC has fewer windtunnel hours so if they can, they will be the most invested in moving onto the next season's car.

It was also suggested that if a team shows up with a crap car, that they might choose to abandon their concept and focus all of their resources on next year's car (something that Haas did in 2021, and other teams have done in the past.) It was suggested that this should be forbidden.

Are there merits to these argument?


I personally do not agree. Teams should be able to choose how to allocate their resources for any season. If a team wants to build their 2026 car with the 2023 budget, then so be it. They will not do well in 2023 and that's the caveat and it should be there choice to make for the hope of making a big leap for '26. If the FIA did not allow teams at the back to try radical strategies like this, it would simply enforce the status quo.

[Big Tea]

In other words, could you offer employees eye watering salaries to do non-reportable, non-F1 task for half of the year, in order to be able to take advantage of their F1 expertise for the other half of the year?

Yes, so long as what they do away from F1 doesn't involve information useful to F1 (be that direct R&D or some otherway of obtaining informationbeneficial to F1).

If you want to pay them lots of money to design sail boats, or gliders, or more efficient ways to grow tomatoes, then fine. If you want them to work on an exclusive ground-effect track car, then not fine.

There is probably little that could not have some effect on F1. Or at least could result in information or knowledge that can be applied to F1 indirectly..

For instance - go and design and test a new type of vacuum cleaner sounds well away from racing until you consider what would be learned a bout high speed flows, and the test time is not included either.
I'm sure the minds concerned are ahead of ours (well, mine anyway) and could learn about turbos from an egg boiler.

[AR3-GP]

In other words, could you offer employees eye watering salaries to do non-reportable, non-F1 task for half of the year, in order to be able to take advantage of their F1 expertise for the other half of the year?

Yes, so long as what they do away from F1 doesn't involve information useful to F1 (be that direct R&D or some otherway of obtaining informationbeneficial to F1).

If you want to pay them lots of money to design sail boats, or gliders, or more efficient ways to grow tomatoes, then fine. If you want them to work on an exclusive ground-effect track car, then not fine.

There is probably little that could not have some effect on F1. Or at least could result in information or knowledge that can be applied to F1 indirectly..

For instance - go and design and test a new type of vacuum cleaner sounds well away from racing until you consider what would be learned a bout high speed flows, and the test time is not included either.
I'm sure the minds concerned are ahead of ours (well, mine anyway) and could learn about turbos from an egg boiler.

An egg boiler would teach you compact electronics design as well as the thermodynamics of boiling fluids and the fluid dynamics of hot gases. This is applicable to F1. There is very little in engineering that cannot be transferred to F1 because all engineering comes from only a handful of core principles which describe the ways in which our physical world behaves. Think of it like this. The entire world is built from legos. If you can learn about legos, you can transfer your learning to any engineering job. It's laughable to think that someone who goes to work on sail boat design cannot bring anything they learned back to f1.

[diffuser]

Adrian Newey is only being used as an example. Do you have any opinion of the rest of the post which is the much more interesting discussion point?

If F1's goal is to prevent teams from circumventing the cost cap, then hiring employees from rival teams would need to be policed. Whether that means Adrian Newey is chained to a desk at RB or not, it's a question that must be answered, if only to expose the inconvenient conclusions which is presents. This may just prove that the cost cap is a fool's errand.

As I pointed out in the original post, AMR bought tons of IP for pennies on the dollar by simply paying a salary to heavily embedded employees of rival teams. Why is this overlooked? Is this not a blatant circumvention of the cost cap? They've gained access to ideas and technology that they did not have to account for in their budget because it came by way of the minds of the people they hired. People like Blandin and Fellows may have spent millions in R&D at RB and Mercedes to develop methodology, aerodynamic understandings, etc, and could show up at AMR with the final results of that R&D in their heads to regurgitate for Lawrence Stroll. Do you think that's not what is being done and why Lawrence went after these people in the first place?

I’m sorry but what is your point? That Mercedes (or any other team for that matter) cannot hire an individual with intimate knowledge of design of the team they’re coming from?

What you’re proposing is, in effect penury. “You cannot leave because you have intimate knowledge of the team you’re coming from”?

Genuine question, if you believe that people can’t be hired because they have knowledge of a team then what you’re proposing is a static job market? I’ve been hired in multiple roles because of my experience (and knowledge) and what experience I can bring to an organisation from my previous experience (with adaptation of course).

I may be misunderstanding you (and apologies if that’s the case) but it feels like what you’re proposing is that successful people cannot move because they’re successful and that’s against the cost cap principles? (FWIW I think the cost cap is a joke, RB proved that last year, slap on the wrist and gains built in for years but that’s just my opinion and frankly I have many others, equally invalid )

(Incidentally, I’m not looking for a fight, I’m genuinely interested how the movement of personnel between teams could, or more importantly, should, be policed?)

I don't think that people can't be hired, because they already "know things". I'm just presenting the similarity between the issue for which TD54 (?) addresses, and the matter of hiring people who have ideas in their head for which no cost can be tied to them. It just proves you can't actually make a team properly account for ideas. After all, AMR couldn't dream of fitting under the cap, what they got for free by hiring Blandin and Fallows. It's a giant hole in what the cost cap hoped to achieve. Now the way to access millions of dollars of R&D knowledge, for pennies on the dollar, is to head hunt at RB, Mercedes, and Ferrari...

The Cost CAP has rules to explicitly allow 3 employees to not be applied against the Cost CAP. Think that rule was put in there too FORCE the movement of top personnel. Keep the top 3 and the rest Move on, once they've served their Gardening leave. Legally what's in an Employee's head is his to be used as he wishes. Plus the movement of personnel has been around since the beginning of F1. All the CAP did was prevent the TOP 3 teams from spending enough to horde them all.

[Just_a_fan]

It's laughable to think that someone who goes to work on sail boat design cannot bring anything they learned back to f1.

And yet when it was suggested projects like Valkyrie could be used to help finesse ideas for an F1 car, the idea was lambasted by many as nothing on another car applies to F1 cars.

It's fairly obvious that the TD is aimed at ground effect hypercar projects rather than egg timers or racing yachts.

[AR3-GP]

It's laughable to think that someone who goes to work on sail boat design cannot bring anything they learned back to f1.

And yet when it was suggested projects like Valkyrie could be used to help finesse ideas for an F1 car, the idea was lambasted by many as nothing on another car applies to F1 cars.

It's fairly obvious that the TD is aimed at ground effect hypercar projects rather than egg timers or racing yachts.

The Valkyrie was commissioned by Aston Martin, not RB. Call it good luck to have this project fall into his lap. The others also made hypercars. Mercedes are using an F1 PU in a road car. Ferrari just won Le Mans with a V6 hybrid race car. So long as the regulation do not forbid such cross collaboration, then there is no rule violation.

One must accept that some teams are more clever than others.

[dans79]

An egg boiler would teach you compact electronics design as well as the thermodynamics of boiling fluids and the fluid dynamics of hot gases. This is applicable to F1. There is very little in engineering that cannot be transferred to F1 because all engineering comes from only a handful of core principles which describe the ways in which our physical world behaves.

The thing is anyone with a hardcore science or engineering background learned stuff like this as an undergrad. a lot of stuff like this are used in applicant screening to weed out people who aren't even worth interviewing.

It's laughable to think that someone who goes to work on sail boat design cannot bring anything they learned back to f1.

take a look at the reynolds numbers involved in foiler design vs F1. Consider the difference of working with an incompressible fluid vs a very compressible one!

[AR3-GP]

An egg boiler would teach you compact electronics design as well as the thermodynamics of boiling fluids and the fluid dynamics of hot gases. This is applicable to F1. There is very little in engineering that cannot be transferred to F1 because all engineering comes from only a handful of core principles which describe the ways in which our physical world behaves.

The thing is anyone with a hardcore science or engineering background learned stuff like this as an undergrad. a lot of stuff like this are used in applicant screening to weed out people who aren't even worth interviewing.

It's laughable to think that someone who goes to work on sail boat design cannot bring anything they learned back to f1.

take a look at the reynolds numbers involved in foiler design vs F1. Consider the difference of working with an incompressible fluid vs a very compressible one!

It’s a sail boat, not a submarine. Emphasis on the word “sail”….

Furthermore, you can write CFD code that can be parameterized for any fluid, water or air at the stroke of a key.

[TimW]

Do they model the flow as compressible for F1 car modeling? As a layman I am always surprised that a lot of aerodynamic modeling considers the air as incompressible.

The boat engineering involves a lot of work on foils nowadays, so surely submerged. But I'd expect a lot of the effort to go into controllability, cavitation and ventilation issues, not so much pure hydrodynamic performance. Problems that share similarities with F1 issues like driveability and porpoising, so there might be carry over in how to approach such things.

[AR3-GP]

Do they model the flow as compressible for F1 car modeling? As a layman I am always surprised that a lot of aerodynamic modeling considers the air as incompressible.

The boat engineering involves a lot of work on foils nowadays, so surely submerged. But I'd expect a lot of the effort to go into controllability, cavitation and ventilation issues, not so much pure hydrodynamic performance. Problems that share similarities with F1 issues like driveability and porpoising, so there might be carry over in how to approach such things.

It depends on what you are studying and the local Mach number. Generally, no, external flows are considered as incompressible, but any turbo engine car will have compressibility considerations inside the intake system so they are going to deal with both types of flows.

[dans79]

It’s a sail boat, not a submarine. Emphasis on the word “sail”….

The current generation of "boats" are foilers, the most important bit of the boat (something i don't personally consider them), is the foils.

Furthermore, you can write CFD code that can be parameterized for any fluid, water or air at the stroke of a key.

I think you missed my point, cfd by itself is next to useless, as it's just a tool. What's useful is the highly skilled person who can interpret the output of a simulation and improve the performance of the object being simulated. because of the difference of the fluid properties and the reynolds numbers, very little can be transferred.

imo, the thing that would be the most transferable would be composite design techniques, and composite structure analysis.