richard_leeds wrote:I doubt a driver has that much influence over the decision making. Yes they can say which setup feels better or not, but they're hardly qualified to say pull rod instead of push rod are they?
We see the same PR pumped out every winter about car x is going to be designed to be perfect for driver y. In reality, the technical teams do their utmost to design the fastest possible car that complies with the regs. Anything that distracts from that is sub-optimal, and that includes the whims of the driver.
Put it another way, if you employed hundreds of highly qualified technical people you'd wonder why you bother signing the pay cheques if their years of technical expertise are overruled by a driver with no technical qualifications?
So as marcrush said, the problem lies in the hundred of design staff in Woking.
Of course the driver doesn't deside wheter pull rod or push rod. And of course the driver doesn't have a say in wheter the front wing should be 3 or 4 elements. But alot of the suspension geometries are based on driver feedback and wheter the driver preferes over or understeer. So a lot of the mechanical design is done together with the driver/s.
And that task can be very difficult if you have a driver that doesn't give proper feedback. And Buttons countless problems with finding a set up that suits him tells me that he can't be very good at providing valuable feedback to the design team.