Strategy for an F1 team

[mxc531]

I am currently writing a piece of businesscoursework. Its aims are to evaluate a strategy for a particular F1 team to implement. The stucture has to compose of some collaborative strategies (working with other co. e.g engne designs, fuel companies.) and competitive ( not linked with another co e.g. buy a driver).

Can anyone give me any ideas as to what in particular an F1 team is likely to do to improve in the following season. Within a specific strategy???

Thanks Michael

[WhiteBlue]

you could use the relationship between Renault/Red Bull/Toro Rosso.

Ferrari/Force India would be another example. FI uses Ferrari customer engines for some time but they will additionally use the Ferrari selected KERS (Magneti Marelli) next year. Contrary to that they do their own chassis and gearbox design and use Airbus Industries as a technology source for CFD. They probably also use Weigl for the box, at least the former ownership did that.

[Belatti]

Regarding drivers, my strategie would be not to renew the contract to a driver who didn´t get where I expect. The biggest mistakes from MY point of view is what Honda and Toyota are/were doing with Button/Barrichello and Trulli/Ralph Schumacher and what Red Bull is doing with Coulthard.

To me, the drivers are the ones who pushes the engineers the most to make succesful cars, not viceversa. Schumacher and Alonso as themost recent cases. Then there are drivers who are extremely fast, but doesn´t help to develop the car as much (Raikkonen, Hakkinen).
I conclude this analising each driver with his team-mate. When engineers design cars taking into account "pushing drivers" input, they perform much faster than their team-mates.

[DaveKillens]

I would suggest examining the current path BMW has taken. They were in a partnership with Williams that didn't work out in the end, and changed policies. They parted company with Williams, bought a team (Sauber), and integrated/ added personnel to achieve their goals. They had simple, publicly-stated goals. The first year, was to just be better than Williams. Also during that year, JV was finally retired from F1 and Kubica brought up to be a full time race driver.