Mclaren Confess!

[enkidu]

1. Quick shift - I thought all teams use this now anyway? Pioneered by Honda I believe
2. Fast fill - Limited by the flow rate of the FIA pumps and nossle.
3. CO2 as tire gas - Common knowledge, even I knew about it.

[FLC]

Your post has made me rethink this, and so I've done a small research.
I'm sorry, Modbaraban, but even though you weren't sure of yourself it turns out that you were right in the first place.

From what I understand now, "quick shift" refers to the handle inside the cockpit and which is part of the brake balance system (the one with 3 positions for the driver to adjust). The term was also used during the WMSC hearing in September:

“Mike [Coughlan] asked me to begin work to design a quick-shift brake balance adjustment system, not a particularly difficult task, as McLaren had used a quick-shift system before, in 2001 and 2002. My work mainly involved taking the knowledge that we already had about quick-shift systems and optimising it for use on the 2007 McLaren car.

The fast fill also referes to the brake balance system. This is what I've found in Adam Coopers' article on SPEEDtv.com (link below):

The Ferrari system is operated by a quickshift lever in the cockpit, and as was suggested in September works via a two-stage – or “fast fill” master cylinder. Both of those aspects have been pinpointed by the FIA as having been borrowed by McLaren from Ferrari.

COOPER: How Spy-Gate Was Settled

I apologies for misleading you.

enkidu, I dont know how and since when you know about the CO2 gas, but everything suggests that even McLaren had no idea about it and they seemed very eager to test it. I'm also pretty sure that any team on the grid would be more than happy to have access to info on quick shift gearbox systems of other teams, even if most of them already use it, if not all of them.

[enkidu]

I think it was said on ITV or something in the year..... Said Ferrari use a special gas as it handles the cold/warm temperature better... To be honest I would have thought all teams would be trying it...

[eidetic]

Surely when you hire someone from another team, even if they dont take physical or digital information, they would remember a lot of concepts and up and coming designs of their previous employer. Does this constitute theft of intellectual property?

where do you draw the line?

Almost any technical profession nowadays (at least in the US) requires NDAs (Non-disclosure agreements) to be signed by the employee upon hiring. The construct of these can vary, but generally they mean "If we find out that you've disclosed proprietary company IP to anyone, we're allowed to sue the pants off you".

I'd be very surprised to learn if F1 engineers don't sign some seriously restrictive NDAs.

I'm a freelance 3D visualization artist. That is, I take product designs and model and render them to give the client a realistic vision of their product/idea. I also at times work for competing companies.

So while I don't actually design new products, I'm privy to new design ideas. I'm ALWAYS under NDA when it comes to currently unreleased products, and even products that have been on the market for years. VERY restrictive NDAs. Sometimes to the point I can't even disclose I'm working for said companies.