Staff levels

[grano123]

I am curious as to the amount of staff some teams appear to have, and exactly what every employee does each day?

If the actual race personnel is limited to 45 people at the track, or so i believe, and this 45 people seemingly is sufficient to manage the preparation work load of 2 cars through race week, it seems perhaps illogical that when they return to the team base, there are ALOT more people there to do much of the same work?

Obviously I am aware of the development work going on at the factory, etc, but with very little testing and no test teams anymore, I just wonder how everyone's salary if justified? It's not like any of the teams are a production facility, producing widgets which sell in mainstream commercial outlets that necessitate machining, fabrication, composite, design departments, etc, to be running 24/7.......is it? What does everyone do all day.............

Is it possible to operate an F1 team which a smaller workforce of skilled people, rather than a numbers game of not so skilled? Would this not be the most fiscallly beneficial way to do it and in essence reduced the overall operating costs though less staff and associated costs?

[Lycoming]

Everything they make is essentially custom made. They have a handful of "off the shelf" parts that they purchase, but a lot of stuff is made in house, and most parts are unique. There's a lot that cannot be automated as in a mass production factory. This applies to pretty much everything made of carbon, and carbon is their default material. That aside, they are constantly producing parts. It takes A LOT of work to make a single front wing; they must make over at least around a dozen in a season, as upgrades and replacements for damaged parts. And thats just the front wing; all the other stuff needs to be made multiple times in a season to replace damaged parts or for upgrades. Every time you have upgrades, you have to remake the mould, which is incredibly time consuming. The bigger teams will also be making 6 tubs per season. Carbon work needs to be done by skilled personnel. ply orientation, sandwich material, etc. is not stuff that anybody can do. The same goes for all their machined parts. Even CNC mills require skilled and trained operators.

And thats not even counting the hundreds of test parts that have to go through the wind tunnel, most of which will never race.

If we move on to the number of people required in engineering, I don't think its unrealistic for the bigger teams to have over 50 people responsible, and you can bet their job won't be outsourced to india.