Ground Effect wrote: ↑13 Mar 2019, 15:15
trinidefender wrote: ↑13 Mar 2019, 14:42
Ground Effect wrote: ↑13 Mar 2019, 10:37
Zak himself has named Fry and Stella as the creators of the MCL34, I don't know why AMuS are saying this.
Considering that Pat Fry was only announced on September 4th, 2018 I doubt that he had a whole lot of influence in this car. Much of the car was designed with the major parts such as the tub design already signed off for by the time Fry would have even started.
According to Zak
"We’ve brought in Gil de Ferran, who brings an unusual mix of a racer’s instinct with strategic acumen, promoted Andrea Stella to lead our performance development and analysis group, brought back Pat Fry as engineering director to lead the design of the MCL34, and of course appointed James Key as our technical director to give us the singular technical leadership that has been missing,"
He also went further
"Pat Fry, who we’ve won many races and championships with, re-joined us during 2018, to lead and co-ordinate the design and delivery of the MCL34."
It's possible he was had been working for a while before the formal announcement was made. As far as I know, he wasn't attached anywhere prior to joining.
Nothing you quoted there has contradicted anything I said. Just because he was brought in to lead the development work of the McL34 doesn't mean that most of the car wasn't designed before he started.
What usually happens in situations like this in any engineering industry is that the ground work is done as best as possible by the interim team and then when the new head is brought in, they are brought up to speed and are handed the reins. There is some form of transition period where the new head has to review all their work and can make changes where possible and/or set the design direction for the future. In most cases, large parts of the design will already be frozen unfortunately.
There are a few parts that have long lead times such as the tub, gearbox casing fuel tank design etc. Take the tub for example, it has to meet devising criteria set out by many different departments and each extra set of specs make it more complicated. First and foremost it has to pass front, side, rear and also, the one people forget, rollover tests. The chassis guys give specifications for required stiffness and suspension mounting points. The PU team will give specifications for fuel tank/PU/battery integration. The aero team is in front of all this, having laid out the basic aerodynamic concept months ago which defines the parameters that the tub and sidepod/PU work within.
Just getting the tub signed off involves hundreds of engineers and thousands of hours of design work and this is before a tub is built and/or crash tested.
From what I've read a car design process is about 18 months minimum from concept to running on track.
So sure, Pat Fry may well lead the design direction in the future and will obviously have influenced the design somewhat since joining however it is almost guaranteed that large parts of the car will have been written in stone from before he was able to personally sign off on any changes.
Lastly a TD of a car does very little if any of the groundwork for the actual design/engineering for a car. They set the design direction and make the tough decision about when to sign off a part being "good enough" or to keep pushing and risk a part coming in late. They are essentially engineering and people managers.
