Perhaps a silly question

[astracrazy]

Perhaps a silly question but what is the difference between a Chief Technical Officer/Technical Drector and a Chief designer?

For example, Adrian Newey gets all the credit for the rb6 and 7 as his car. But Red Bull has a chief designer, so why is it not all down to him or there head of aerodynamics?

How does the structure/system work?

[rodi]

Perhaps a silly question but what is the difference between a Chief Technical Officer/Technical Drector and a Chief designer?

For example, Adrian Newey gets all the credit for the rb6 and 7 as his car. But Red Bull has a chief designer, so why is it not all down to him or there head of aerodynamics?

How does the structure/system work?

It is not a silly question. This aspects are known only whitin Teams. So I can help you.
The TD is the responsible for the all projects. The Chief Designer is responsible for the chassis+gearbox design. He receives the car profile from the Aero Group and has to guarantees the feasibility of building and running that profile: The Aero Group is headed by Aerodynamic Leader: in redbull there is Pete Prodromou, one of the best engineer I have come across.
Hope this helps.
rodibasso

[astracrazy]

so Newey will have a rough design/idea of the car. give these targets and ideas to the people under him who then work on that basis?

the head of aero might say we've made this new front wing and its up to newey if it goes on?

[Nando]

Seems like he has a lot to say. On the plane home from when they won the title in 2011 he was sketching on ideas for next year according to Horner.

He calls himself one of the last few Dinosaurs left in the game

[raymondu999]

To be honest it differs team to team.

[rodi]

so Newey will have a rough design/idea of the car. give these targets and ideas to the people under him who then work on that basis?

the head of aero might say we've made this new front wing and its up to newey if it goes on?

Adrian's background is aerodynamics. So he works very close to Prodromou's Group. The aero guys simulate with CFD an aero profile. If it gives a positive result, it is then produced in rapid prototyping and tested on the wind tunnel (which runs almost 23 h per day). If the result is positive also there (like: more downforce, less drag-->more efficiency). Then the profile is sent to the technical office, produced and finally tested on the car a...on friday. And finger crossed...the driver and the data will provide the final response on the new part. Together with the laptime...
rodibasso

[astracrazy]

thanks for explaining to me

[marcush.]

Newey is not just aerodynamics, his world is aeronautical engineering - and ONE aspect of it aero.He is special in todays world that he is giving a complete set of drawings to the CAD office where his 2D outputs are scanned -digitized and kind of reverse engineered into 3d data.A very different approach to how things are layed out normally.
Basically at RedBull the car development is in Neweays head and the Office is doing the detail design just as itertating steps /rounds.

It´s safe to say all other teams start off by laying out dimensionconcepts as the development envelope in CAD and start designing the thing within these sets of constraints fitting all the components into a digital mockup -which seems to be the easier approach but in reality is not enhancing creativity..

As Newey is very much his own man he just had to have his own job description .Usually a leader of such a big group of people would be completely drowned into managing these people and not actually drawing components ,systems or the whole thing ..As Newey does not exell in this it is necessary to create a niche for his talent to benefit most.

There are definetely other TDs who are not necessarily brilliant designers themseles but are very good in motivating and guiding talented people and organise the work environment so they can produce the best possible product.
Maybe Paddy Lowe is such a guy.