采访前F1车队高管 | 如果我是法拉利领队...(全英文)| 飞驰圈®xDr. Arron Melvin
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Hello everyone and welcome to the Flying Lab podcast. I'm Chester. I'm Thomas. This time, a little switch up on the format and this episode is going to be all English because we have a special guest today. And joining us is Dr. Aaron Melvin, former head of aero at HASSF1, senior aerodynamicist at Mercedes and Honda, and most importantly, the championship winning Brown GP team in 2009. Welcome, Aaron. Woo!

Hi. Wow, this is such a-- Such a generous introduction. Yeah, and welcome. Can we call you Aaron? That's my preference. Thank you. So Aaron, how are you doing today? I think it's super early in there.

Oh yeah, that's normal rise and shine time. No problem. I think we should do a pre-introduction as why the background of Aaron is similar as Qin. I was laughing about that. In case anybody wonders, Dr. Maomen is the husband of our beloved Qin Jie. So I guess the next guest would be Navier, huh? So collect the whole family. He's getting ready.

Okay, he's very talented. So I think we should start with maybe, you actually know a lot about the Chinese fans as you have been living with Qin for so many years. I guess maybe you can have a slight introduction of what you have done that may interest our audience. Yeah, sure.

I certainly can relate to a lot of topics that Qin tells me that Chinese fans are interested in, which is a foreigner interested in Formula One racing. So, sure, it's a Western sport, but it's very European and it's a long way for an American. So, especially back, you know, I'm...

I'm 45 years old, so when I was getting interested, it was right in the formation of BAR Honda, just to give you some context. So the beginning of the Brackley team.

That was 2006? 1999. Whoa, okay. All the way back. Okay. Yeah, I think it may... No, I think I might be wrong. It might have even been 98. I don't quite remember. The zipper car, I think it was 99. But that was the day of IndyCar with Reynard. And that's kind of how I got my start. In any case, Formula One is a very...

European sport and not accessible to Americans. Maybe more so like a foreigner for them. Oh, uh, I was, I was, I think there's only two Americans in Haas before I hired a couple of more in terms of Haas technical team. Uh, when I worked in Brackley, I, there was, um, Otmar Safnar was an American, but really very few, maybe a couple of Americans at any of the teams I worked in. So from that aspect, uh,

I can relate to some of the topics of what the Chinese fan might be interested in. And then certainly a lot of the topics I believe that your fans are interested in are universal, that all fans have, whether European or my family even with...

And the point is, maybe we'll touch on, depending on what you want to talk about, is no matter how close you are to the sport, it can be very hard to uncover the truth. And, you know, there's a lot of reasons for anything that happens. And it's fun to talk about and to think about, but it's very hard to be precise on why McLaren is so fast or...

Whoever is so slow. Not to name any names, right? Yeah. We can say the green cars, they're slow, but yeah.

Well, yeah, I mean, Sauber and Williams are an interesting story, right? They declined very badly due to lack of investment. So that is pretty simple. Yeah. But then how do you recover and what's going to happen? So, yeah, we can get into that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think it's great how enthusiastic the Chinese audience is. Yeah.

hopefully I can make it more fun for them. Why don't we start with how did you get interested in Formula 1 as a foreigner just like us? How did you get into this business? Interested like many

many, many, uh, of the fans, uh, uh, came across it on television watching with, um, my father. Uh, so that was waking up at 5.00 AM, uh, to see, uh, Senna drive and then, um, eventually Schumacher. So I was a competitive ski racer my whole childhood. I love competition, uh, and, and, um,

very technically minded so I like both I love sports not particularly good at them but but totally devoted to them in my childhood and and I love competition and then the technical aspect appeals to me so I was like a lot of children love cars and I appreciate design but it was always about

the performance of a car rather than admiring the looks. You combine that with my interest in competition from ski racing, saw IndyCar come to the circuit, which is 20 minutes from our house in Portland every year. Back then, all you needed to do was write a letter, physical letter, to all of the IndyCar engineers. And they were incredibly welcoming and gracious and gave me advice and said, go get some real experience and get to work. So,

So from that time on, I just worked. I volunteered preparing race cars at the amateur level in Oregon. And every summer in between college,

I went to Princeton out in the East coast, so along all the way across the country. And I, I just was very determined to find a job in racing, which started with Raynard's wind tunnel in Indianapolis, which took a phone call every day for two months to get the, uh, the chief designer of that facility on the phone. Uh, so every single day, at least one or two phone calls per day, and

and force him to take my call. And then the second summer, I got an internship with Indy Lights race team and I was polishing wheels. And the head engineer there at the end of the summer said, I never once looked up and saw you not working. So...

you know, the enthusiasm and hard work is what brought further opportunities. So it's very lucky, but, you know, you create your own ways in, even if it's at the very, very base level. And that's something interesting. I don't know enough about Chinese motorsport environment yet. What exists at the grassroots level?

That's what I actually just wanted to mention. Nobody in China has a circuit 20 minutes away. You have a team that you can just take an internship at during your summertime or something. That's something actually we think we have a lot of people who also share a similar level of enthusiasm. But maybe, yeah, we admire that you can have that opportunity. But that's good.

Yeah, definitely. Like a lot of people here are all petrolheads. They love motorsport. They love racing. But sometimes if they want to get into a motorsport team or like do anything, it's kind of a great leap and hard to find the opportunities. And there's no like...

a path that everyone agreed on, like how to get in. And like, yeah, Yifei and also Zhuguang, they like went to the European side of racing to get there. As a driver. Yeah, as a driver and as an engineer. And also, if you want to work in the Formula level team, the highest level in China is Formula 4. So still quite far away. But that's my point is, what I started out is few levels below Formula 4.

So it is certainly tough without a known activity and who do you call and so on. But there must be circuits and activity in China. So that's fascinating.

what I'd love to learn about some maybe another time. Maybe Chester, you should hire some mechanics for your karting from our audience. That could be a grassroots start. Yeah. I mean, the karting scene in Beijing is actually growing and throughout China. I think that's one of the bright spots. But what we lack nowadays is just something above karting and maybe above Formula 4.

that's like something's lacking. We have CTCC, which is kind of like BTCC. It's highly competitive. A lot of manufacturers are in it. And that's about it. The GT racing series, China GT was dead like for a couple of years. It came back this year. But overall, the GT racing and also anything that's beyond Formula 4 and TCR is a bit lacking. Yeah, after hearing what you said, I agree with Aaron on this case. Actually, we have a lot of opportunity just...

By considering taking an internship in a racing team, Formula 4 or GT3, it is good enough. But people in China in general does not have this sense that I should join, I should actively seek for an opportunity to have initial exposure to the motorsport world. That's lesson one we learned today.

Oh, yeah, exactly. It really is true. Like, actually, it's relatively rare among American students as well. So now the common in Europe and America is just to do formula student in the university, which is so...

You know, there's every university, mechanical or aerospace engineering university has have these programs. That's not enough. You know, it's good to get some practical experience in the real world. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So speaking of Aaron, your journey. So after Indy Lights, how'd you become an engineer at Pratt & Miller? And also how did that experience get you to Formula One? So that first meeting with IndyCar engineers in the late 90s, and I have all the letters still in my personal files. Some very nice. And I even met with Robbie Gordon, a couple of drivers. The statement from those engineers was aerodynamics is the most

powerful factor in making an IndyCar fast. And certainly that applied to Formula One as well. So that's why I went into aerodynamics was simply it's the most important factor. And as it turns out, I love fluid mechanics and aerodynamics, so that's rather convenient. But the motivation was entirely to be the best Formula One designer possible.

And that's, again, the only reason I went to Princeton and stayed there for a PhD in computational aerodynamics is I could see how complicated designing these cars would be. And I learned a little bit about the process from my internship in Raynard University.

in the summers, I designed one of the first ever NASCAR wind tunnel models. And I participated in, you know, at a very low level, just an assistant in the design of IndyCar wind tunnel programs and

And, you know, saw the process and saw how deficient it was, or at least the opportunity to do better. And I said to myself, okay, I need to do a PhD to become a better applied aerodynamicist. And so that's why I spent 10 years in Princeton. Then...

I was very well trained, very lucky to get a job. So I applied to all the teams and rejected by most of them. I got interviews. Wait, wait, wait. So I just want to clarify. You went to get a PhD because you specifically want to join an F1 team. That's...

That's the only point. So my life in college was very easy because what I wanted to do was simple. In America, you don't have to pick your vocation or major even very early. You go to Princeton to learn and you can study philosophy or English or whatever. And for me, it's very clear. I did two degrees. I did mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering.

All of my projects, every single independent project was focused on how do I apply my knowledge to a Formula One car? Because the foundation of my education was extremely theoretical, which I think is what made my career. Meaning it's not about what you learn and learn.

whether you know what resin system works for toughness in composites, you learn about the theory and how to think and the framework. Then I was able to apply that to how it might work on a Formula One car by estimating

building strain gauged composite beams that couple bending and torsion and you think about oh this is what I might do one day in the aero elasticity of a F1 wing I had a few interviews you know I applied to 10 teams maybe back then there were 12 teams and I think I only got two interviews and

I ended up getting a job offer from Honda F1 team. So I joined them in 2007. Actually, I have a guess. I don't know whether you agree. I think back to 2006 or 2007, PhD degree from Princeton may be too overqualified for Formula One. They were probably scared by you. I don't think that's true, but it's true.

I was a little bit disappointed on my first day of work because Princeton was so brutal from an intellectual honesty point of view.

you are ripped apart to get to the truth. And I could see right away in a professional environment, maybe because there's so much emotion invested or I don't know, the culture in almost every working environment is not so focused on radical honesty or robustness. So yeah, that was something I had to learn right away is, in Princeton, I was extremely far from

from the most talented or the smartest. You know, there are true geniuses, numerous geniuses that you might encounter every day. You know, pretty special place. And in a Formula One team, there's a lot of great engineers and smart people, but it's nothing like the true intellect of a top university. Yeah, we had another friend,

who worked at Rebel Powertrains on the 2026 regulation. And he said like basically the same thing. After joining in, he was somehow a little bit disappointed since like a lot of people are not that interested in like maybe

to try to find out like, how does thing work? Like what's the underlying theory and, uh, um, the fundamental part of it. Uh, they only care if it works on track and if it has performance, then it's fine. Like let's move on to the next step because development is like on the clock. On the other hand, that's, what's fun. That's engineering, right? Because we're not scientists. We are competitors with an engineering task. And that's, that's the distinction, right? Um, you know, the, the,

foundation of, of sustained success in, in my group in aerodynamics was trying to get to the truth and totally interested in the science.

So that's the key. But where do you become pragmatic and move on and focus? One of the things we try to understand in job interviews, and I know we weren't unique in my group, it's important for any team to understand a scientist, some PhD coming to the team, are they going to be satisfied moving on? Or do they need to know every last detail and work for 20 years on one problem?

And there's no right or wrong, it's just different. And we try to uncover people's preferences. And indeed, one of the reasons I was interested in PhDs when we were interviewing people was to figure out their toughness and meaning their real intellectual curiosity and to

go through the basics, meaning the physical phenomena. And that's how you uncover performance reliably. So it is a tricky balance. Okay. So we have a, I think the audience knows something about what is happening in Formula One teams today. You know, we see all this drama news coming from teams. But when you went back to 2007, when you joined Honda, what's like the major difference between an F1 team and

in the past and compared with now.

More than we have time for. But the key essence is, you know, the scale was larger. It was a large, I don't know the facts of the budget, but it was a almost effectively unlimited budget back then. You know, we weren't limited by the budget. We had 198 people in our aerodynamics department in, I think that was a number from 2008. But 2007, we were about the same size.

And as an industry, we did a much worse job. You know, it's just, you know, it's nice to, one of the things I'm proud about is, or have enjoyed seeing is how much better we have gotten the industry at doing the job through the years. So as a thought experiment, you know, a lot of fans, we always talk about switching drivers around and this and that. What if we just gave the teams the 2008 regulations again?

What would the cars look like? Yeah.

Yeah, we had these grooved tires that were terrible. There were a lot of things. It's an impossible thing. But just aerodynamically, how much better of a job would we do? Because those cars were very complicated. There was no radius rule on the bodywork. So we could put devices anywhere we wanted. Basically anywhere, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it would be very fun to return to them. And that's one of the things we think about is 2022 with the new regulations in Haas,

we understood the architecture that the regulations demanded. And so we had a pretty successful car. We came out relatively competitive and we addressed bouncing relatively quickly because we kind of knew what was coming. But also we got a lot of the basic architecture correct, what has now proven correct years later. And that's one of the things you think about. So

I often think about what would we have done back in 2008 if we had those rules now. Maybe you can do an individual project applying that interesting stuff into that powerful engine card. Yeah. But basically, the teams back then were...

much more cut and try process. So less understanding of the flow physics and much more turning the handle of iterative design refinements. And now we have a much stronger integration of vehicle dynamics and aerodynamics. So

what car do you want to design? Answering that question, we're much better at now. Yeah, especially with the budget and also the ATR aero testing restrictions in hand. So basically teams cannot afford to like just pour, you'd like waste all the testing hours onto like maybe something that doesn't have. Yeah. Say now is more scientist compared with back then was more like engineered.

That's a way of putting it. And it's not as though we were foolish back then, but we were approaching 500 wind tunnel runs per week. So it's a factor of 10 more. So resources. And even back then, one of the projects that we were working on that I was really determined to do was...

not waste information. And we knew we were throwing away a tremendous amount of knowledge per wind tunnel run. But the pace is relentless. How do you extract more information and retain that information when you're working at that rate?

And the teams certainly have gotten much, much better at that. There's a long way to go actually, but they're much better now than, than way back then. Okay. So a little bit background information for our audience. So you joined Honda in 2007, right? And stayed at Brackley, um, through Braun GP and through Mercedes years, and then took a break or you thought it was... I don't call it a break, but...

Yeah, I went to IndyCar. Yeah, okay. And more generally than IndyCar, General Motors hired me to work at Pratt & Miller Engineering, which is a 200-person engineering firm who...

at that, that time for a long time was responsible for all of, um, or almost all of GM racing's activities. They were like a specialist arm. They were technically independent, um, from a business perspective, but they were functionally like a racing, uh,

arm of of gm and they did they still do the corvette uh racing design and manufacture so a lot of skilled technicians um uh and make mechanics uh with manual fabrication methods and i set up an aerodynamics um capability at that company and and we are the primary goal was to to

design the aero package for IndyCar competition, which was, had been a standard body kit from Dallara and the manufacturers were being allowed to design body work. So that was, that was a, a big project. Again, no budget constraint, no knowledge of the competition, but we could only sell the body work for a certain price. Uh, and we,

At GM, we weren't going to subsidize the material. So I had cost-constrained engineering for the first time. So I learned an awful lot in Formula One, nothing about budget control. And then I came to GM and Pratt & Miller and was responsible not just for the aerodynamic design, but for the composite design.

and safety and production where we have to make enough for, I think we had 13 cars. And so we had to make 40 sets of this bodywork. In Formula One, you make three sets to go to a race, right? That's the minimum generally acceptable. So that was a tremendously satisfying project because I had to prove I knew what I was doing at a pretty young age. And we got to do all aspects of that project and

uh, fortunately we were pretty successful and we got to do the Corvette racing aerodynamic design and, and, um, the Cadillac GT3 car and some road special projects for the road cars. Uh,

So we worked a little bit with the studio and the road car, quite a number of projects, actually. So when I left in 2016 to go back to Formula One, I think we had nine active individual projects, one of which would have been the IndyCar. So that was really fun, building a diverse group and working still with technical things.

and precision, but at a very constrained cost. We dominated Honda, which we were proud of, but we were also proud that we were pretty sure that the budget was...

much, much smaller. So it wasn't just that we did a better job. We did it at a much cheaper price. Definitely a good job. It's 2015 and 2016's Drivers' and Manufacturers' Championship in IndyCar. And also the C7R GTLM, which was the Corvette GT car, also won Daytona, Sebring, Le Mans twice, and also 2016 Drivers' Manufacturers' Championship.

So right after Braun GP, then you dominated Honda. Yeah, that's actually what we want to go back a little bit first. I think for the audience, the most interesting part from your first episode of Formula 1 would be how did Honda win bankrupt?

and how did it become a Brown GP that started the most legendary story in Formula One? You went through all these stories. And anything we don't know about this yet that you can share with us? Some of that behind the scenes. Yes, any individual's version will be a partial version. So an aspect that shows the power of an individual is,

is where did this idea come from for the Bron GP project, meaning not the company, but the car project? Well, Loic Bigois was the head of aerodynamics at Williams, which back then was a pretty serious team, you know, and I'm not implying anything different. Well, serious is a really interesting word I've never heard before, but I like it.

Why do I say that word? Because they had an excellent wind tunnel. So the Brackley Wind Tunnel, which we call Wind Tunnel 2, because it was the second tunnel, is almost identical to the Williams one, or at least kind of the key parts, steel conveyor belt and kind of the most of the key parts are

very similar. So Williams was fairly early to get into this modern generation of wind tunnels. And in that time, that context, it was excellent. But Loic could see that the rest of the supporting infrastructure, investment, context around the team wasn't enough to be successful.

moved to Honda, displaced good personal friend of mine. And so I didn't like this person. And now he's a great friend. Loic was extremely important in influencing the 2009 car project. So there are many other people as well. But he

set up the idea of getting to work early. Sounds so simple, but that's very difficult to do when you have the demands of a corporate board saying, why is our 2007's car so awful? And remember, so the 2007 Honda was a big disappointment. 2006, the car was pretty good.

I think that was a race win 2007 near the back, really poor. And the 2008 cars, one of the cars I'm most proud of in all of my career, was an average car. I don't even know where we got in the championship, but we started...

We completely reworked the way the company did aerodynamics. We brought in a lot more consistency and precision in terms of what car are we going to build.

meaning integrated with vehicle dynamics and something that the driver can use effectively and we can develop. And we put on 20% in 20 weeks. I think we might have fallen just shy. We were 18% when we launched the car. 20% is in terms of what? Performance improvement compared to the previous car. Wow, okay, okay. Yeah, that is quite a lot. That's double what you might normally get.

So that was a tremendously successful project, perhaps not supported by a very powerful engine. So in parallel to that, we started on Braun GP's car, the 2009 car, which was supposed to be a Honda, very early. And Loic organized a group working in Japan, an independent group working at a less good, smaller wind tunnel,

early and some of us in the main team working in so-called wind tunnel one, the smaller, older wind tunnel, and at times in wind tunnel two, the big main wind tunnel. So that takes the vision and confidence of a

of a leader to design the program that's going to succeed. And then of course you need, uh, cohesion and execution by all the workers. You know, I was one of the workers dedicated and giving good ideas and like many others. Um, so what's the key ingredient? It's, it's all of these things, but,

That's the foundation of the 2009 car was the early start with good focus. You know, other people started early too, but we're very thorough in reading the regulations and thinking about what car we wanted to end up with, not what gave a good performance in the short term.

Yeah. There's different kind of, uh, starting early. There's like Honda's starting early getting a Bronco GP, a championship winning car. And there's also BMW Sauber starting like, you know, 2007 and 2008 giving up current year's potential hopes. And turns out like next year didn't achieve anything. Well, there's like a loads of things to talk about, obviously, um,

about BrownGP and I think one of the most common talk about myth is all BrownGP won the 2009 championship because of the W diffuser. But I'm sure like you have a lot to say about that, right?

Yeah, yeah. I was part of the group that worked on the diffuser. So if anybody's proud of it, I am. I'm a good friend of Mina Minagawa, who invented it. And I've stayed in his house in Japan. I went and visited him afterwards. So he deserves a tremendous amount of credit for coming up with the idea. When his idea came over to us, it was a performance loss. And a couple of people in my group

wanted, didn't want to adopt the architecture, which would have been a mistake because it was tremendously powerful. But just the point is it wasn't so, it wasn't an aha moment. It was, I remember exactly where I was sitting. So on the other hand, I said, oh, wow, this is a very big deal.

But maybe that wasn't so widely shared as people say now. But why were we good? Because Toyota thought of it early. Williams thought of it early. They developed their cars around it. We even tried to get rid of it. All those stories you've heard from Ross Braun about offering to ban it, we were exceedingly upset at him because we felt we had a good advantage with it. But he did indeed offer to ban it.

let it go because we knew we would have a good car regardless. Why is that? Because we integrated the aerodynamics from nose to tail. Our front wing was by far more developed than anybody else's front wing. It was exceptionally...

more well thought out and especially the upper devices. If the main wing is here, those upper ones there were a new mechanism and very powerful, much better than the other teams at the beginning. And especially we figured out at the back of the car, the flow control with little devices hanging off of the what we called the cake tins or the

off of the inboard face of the wheel. So are those the quadruplanes that people talk about? That's right. What Italians or Ferrari call quadruplane, four plane. Okay. We, I think the first name I called them were bin deflectors because this is the cake tin or bin. Okay. And the,

the fundamental point is it was a wing that we put very close to the ground that created suction at the edge that extended the span of the diffuser, changed the lateral boundary condition, uh, just made the edge flow much, much better. Uh, so it can control the flow through the ride height. It allowed us to make the main diffuser work much harder. Okay. And that's something that was, uh,

Again, put it on and it was powerful right away. And then I just developed it like crazy and it was better and better and better. And my description of how it does, I would not have given. The first day I developed it, drew it, the first month,

No, I didn't understand it that well at all. So it's not like I knew all of this. So there was a mixture of trying something. And a lot of these ideas, you don't know exactly how they're going to work. You have to explore and trying it.

And certainly I would do a better job now as an engineer. I'm a better engineer than I was a couple of years into my career. But I'm extremely proud of that contribution because that mechanism to improve and extend the diffuser is tremendous.

has proven so powerful that it's built into the regulations today. Does it help with the rear wheel tire score as well? Yeah, that's exactly one of the most damaging aspects of the aerodynamics of the car, these pesky tires. And they're always sending some mess of flow where you don't want it. Into the perfect diffuser area. Yeah.

Yeah, why was our diffuser so good? Well, we figured out if you turn it laterally, the outwash of the diffuser into the wake of the tire. So the other thing you should look at, for those fans who are interested, is look at the launch of our car. We had a tremendously powerful sideways turning flow out of the back of the diffuser. And that was enabled because we had the bin deflector or quadruplane installed.

And even... I'm seeing it right now. Good. Toyota and Williams had a double diffuser and they didn't have anything like that. And despite Red Bull or Newey's claim that they had it, their launch car, they didn't have that until they copied us in race three. So that was a weird one to me, why they...

even their memory is not correct. You know, they thought, oh, we had that. No. So that car was extremely impressive in its architecture when their suspension and body work was superior. Yeah.

But we had everything else better. Front wing, diffuser, especially the rear wheel furniture, as sometimes people call it, the spin deflector. Right. So the success of the legendary Braun GP was not only the double diffuser,

But like the aerodynamics from the startup, the whole package, the team structure, and also like from the front wing to how it connects, how it works together, including the double diffuser. It's just one piece. That's right. Exactly correct. We would only have created those designs with the organizational structure that Loic put in place. He didn't design a single part in the car, but without him and his program design, we would not have succeeded. Right.

And without people like me and my colleagues interpreting each bit of work every 10 minutes very well.

we wouldn't have been successful. So it's at all levels that you need to be really coordinated. Right. Yeah. That sounds like a more convincing explanation than what Keanu Reeves said in the program. Yeah. That's the story I'd like to get across to the fans, which is because I was involved behind the scenes a little bit with that production. And we were just disappointed that

It's always the story of the track. You know, the drive to survive was great fun. Keanu Reeves were...

I think they did a great job with that documentary. And the track team is extremely important. The dynamics and how you orient the factory is one of the things I've been able to extend from Formula One into other industries as my professional life evolves and I try and help other organizations and industries. This is one of the key things that Formula One allows us to experiment and work

where I've been helpful with a wide number of industries. Okay. So from like your first episode in Formula One to the second episode, like your role also changed from...

and the guy who actually do the design to the chief arrow. From what we heard, if you become a chief arrow, you actually design less. You make the people to work on the job and you become like the main shareholder for the whole package. So could you explain what kind of role difference between these two episodes of your career? It all depends on which team. So there isn't a...

good consistency between job title and function between teams. And one of my Formula employees has recently switched from

small team of Haas to big team. And he, it's amazing. His mind was blown of the resource they have. And so it's very variable. In the big team, it's the normal, the specialization and the distribution of workload is better. It gives you more time to think. In Haas, we were

tiny, we had to do a lot. So just as I created a group from scratch in, in Michigan, my, the person who hired me, Ben Agathangelo, a really successful longtime Formula One aerodynamics engineer, you know, really, really,

did a great job setting up the team, all aspects of the technical team, including the aerodynamics department. So he hired me as principal aerodynamicist, which in other teams would be called chief. I was responsible for the design of the car. That's in every other team, that's the only job of that person.

In Haas, I was also responsible for the CFD group and the hiring and the running of the group. And I was comfortable with that because of my previous seven years in Michigan doing that plus business development. So to me, it was a step down in overall responsibilities. I spent a lot of time designing the car, but also helping the CFD group improve our method. So

You would like to separate development of tools from development of the car in terms of an individual's responsibility. In Haas, we didn't have that luxury, so I did that.

And we, I hired a lot of young people because getting, even though it's a very desirable job near the back of the grid in Italy is pretty tough to hire experienced people as if they have a family, will they really want to move to Italy for the, maybe they'll move to Italy for Ferrari. Even that's not so easy, much harder for Haas. So

Again, one of the things I'm so proud about is the group we built is an excellent group at Haas and it carried on with momentum after I left. And I hired these very talented individuals, but they needed a lot of training. So I probably ended up drawing a much larger fraction of the car, actual me using the CAD program, communicating shapes to people. Like 2018 car, I drew a substantial fraction.

wasn't my explicit aspiration or target so the even if i was only responsible it was a fast car and and in 2019 i did the same and it was less fast cars it's not i shouldn't just pick the winners that one overheated its tires in a straight line right so it's um you know it's uh

It's tough to talk, you know, that's again, another discussion, but I drew a lot of the car that I didn't want to, I wanted to be responsible for everything we sent to the wind tunnel and to the track, but the chief designer, chief aerodynamicist should not be aspiring to designing individual parts.

I did it because I had to make a competitive car. And it's important to teach people and show them refinement and detail and getting... A lot of the problems that we fix and refine are pretty simple, pretty obvious. But can you do it in one or two tries and not three or four tries so you can move on to the next thing? And another performance differentiator between teams is...

what problems you choose to work on. You know, the ideas that one team or another come send to the track, almost every other team will have thought about, but will they have thought about it in the right context and tried it in the right way and developed it properly? So I referred to 2022 new regulations. When we saw what the other teams were doing, we were very confident because we had thought about those ideas carefully enough to

have moved past them. And that's where, you know, rightly or wrongly, maybe there was some arrogance there, but basically we knew what the others were thinking. And that's what one of the things I tried to do at Haas that was a bit unusual was try very hard to understand what the other teams were doing. I don't care about copying and trying their shape. Actually, probably I'd prefer not to, but I would very much like to

put myself in their mind and think like they're thinking and, uh, and understand is that, uh, productive or not? What road does that take you down? And especially we did that with Ferrari because we were buying the gearbox and the engine and the, uh, uprights from them. Yeah. The whole rear part. Yeah. Yeah. And the front suspension. So there's a tremendous amount and it changed through the years how much we could buy. So, um,

if you get over your ego of doing it myself and you accept that Ferrari have an extremely good performance and we need to understand why they've done what they're doing and we're not going to go another direction until we can do

Uh, it can't tell we can be faster. Exactly. Uh, speaking of performance per dollar, I think the 2018 has a season is definitely one of the highlights where the small team punched much above its weight. So can you explain like what's so special about the VF18 and, uh, um, some of the journeys that year? I came in August of 2016. And so the 2017 architecture was kind of in place.

And 2017, again, was not a bad car, but the big revolution in the industry, all the teams from 17 to 18 were the barge boards, the middle of the car. And that went from being a relatively simplistic device and understanding to something that ended up in 2021 as amazingly sophisticated and intricate technology.

And we got on the, our 2017 design was poor, executed by an extremely good group of aerodynamicists on our car. So it's not like the people working on it were not intelligent, but we weren't sophisticated. So 17, we were improving our way of working, learning, learning each other, teaching, and

We did an okay job. In 2018, everything had gelled much better. And so a lot of it was the group and specifically why the car actually went fast around corners was the front wing was solid, was very good. And the middle of the car was extremely good.

And that put us on the road at 18, 19, 20, our barge board kept us competitive, you know, the middle of the car. So we probably had reasonable designs elsewhere. But yeah, that was kind of the foundation of our success, I think. Hmm.

things maybe you can give us an insight of drivers. Oh, yeah. Palo just won at Indianapolis. And I remember you were saying he was amazing. He is. Yeah. So after working both in Formula 1, also the US side IndyCar event,

how do you rate drivers at the IndyCar right now? Palo, Herta or O-Word? Adding on that is because we were expecting Joe to have a seat next year. So his main competitor, we're guessing would be one of the IndyCar drivers, Palo and especially Herta. So as a professional in the IndyCar. If I were in a position to influence driver choice, of course, I would inform myself a lot better than

consider me a fan. This is a fan's perspective. Um, but yeah, driver selection program, uh, I've long been interested in being involved in and, and I've, I've spoken to some of the, you know, top engineers in, in Mercedes and, and, um,

other teams about how they did it back back then but in IndyCar there there aren't a set of drivers there's one that's Palo is exceptional uh Verstappen of IndyCar well he's currently doing Verstappen in the whole grid right now yeah it's it's it's um nice to see because um he didn't have dominant qualifying speed in previous years and this year looks like he may uh yesterday he

lost a first corner and followed for about two-thirds of the race and had a advantage on strategy with the tire sequencing he didn't wait he took advantage and passed on track and and won by a mile so IndyCar has been frustrating through the years with the influence of safety car yellow flags ruining good driving and speed and we've been lucky this year hasn't really happened

So in the first race, Palo got a little bit lucky because Dixon was without proper team radio and calling his own strategy. So just to comment on how intelligent Scott Dixon is, great driver, six championships, a bit older. So maybe he's, I think he's one year younger than me. He probably isn't quite the same speed he used to be, but this is one of the greatest drivers we've seen.

And Palo is so much ahead. So that's a good reference. The quality of a lot of the IndyCar drivers seems to be managing the tire as it comes in, the in-laps and the out-laps in simple terms, and understanding the tire and how to manipulate it. The same challenges in Formula One, how all of these drivers are so impressive.

feeling the tire so quickly and how Hamilton and Schumacher are better than the others. There's a lot in this. You know, it's not that Michael was so much faster than Barrichello in Barrichello's best. It's that Michael is always at his best and the teammate is only at his best one day a year.

And, you know, that's only a small exaggeration. So, yeah, I think people should appreciate, try and watch some IndyCar, see how well Paolo develops his pace at the right moment. And he's just incredibly fast and clean driving. You know, I like Piastri because he's extremely precise in placement of the car, always tough racer. This year is satisfying because he now brought the speed to go with that.

And maybe it's a bit exaggerated, but the Piastri versus Norris ability to pass Verstappen is kind of telling, right? And we haven't seen a lot of Palo battling because he's so fast, but he's similarly very good, very precise. So I always found the best drivers were cleanest in the

Verstappen is very intentional. He doesn't make mistakes where he puts his car. I shouldn't use the word clean with the way he drives, but he is precise. And you see Montoya was very good at battling with Schumacher because they were both so precise. And that's the drivers I appreciate and I like.

So, yeah. Okay. Trying to appreciate Paolo. He's really good. Yeah. So, in conclusion, you think Paolo is above everybody else. So, Herta, what do you think of him? I don't... Again, I don't know anything. No insider information here. As a fan, yeah. But he...

He's impressive. From now on, everything is just being a fan. Yeah, but I'll give it if I have it, but I just don't know. He was a wasted talent. Didn't work hard, super fast, and you think, oh, what a waste. And now it appears he's a hard worker, stays calm. So I would love to see him move teams to understand how he would do outside of Andretti, where he's been a long time. His dad, I don't think, is a

an undue influence. You know, I don't think it's about his dad. I think it's just be nice to see her at a different team. So I don't have a sense that her, it would be great in F1. Um,

Maybe I'm wrong. I think it'd be fun to see. Okay, so let's talk about realistic chances. Herta now has 31 super license points and Oward technically can apply for super license and Pelot, since he won IndyCard three times, he already has. So Oward and Pelot has technically a shot

at Formula One and also Oward is a McLaren reserve driver tested three times before and the news just broke three days ago he's going to test drive the FP1 session in the Mexico Grand Prix so seems like Oward has a lot of like used a lot of resource at McLaren so do you think maybe yeah McLaren McLaren no way so I guess we're talking about Cadillac and

And I think it's fairly reasonable for them to say they should hire an experienced person. I like the idea of Joe compared Perez because, you know, the problem with a veteran that thinks they should be high up the grid and let's presume Cadillac will not be is

where does the productivity against frustration and, uh, stubbornness and that, that can be that down to the individual and you'd have to know them better to know how it's going to play out. But, uh,

Just think about what a disaster our 2022 season would have been if we didn't have Kevin in instead of the amateur driver. We're talking about how we rate drivers, but can you give us an insight on how an F1 team rates drivers internally? Do they have a spreadsheet or some...

formula does the presentation works like what the George did yeah the truth is I don't know because I don't think it's that well publicized okay

There is a now fairly publicized driver coach. I describe him as a savant. So Rob Wilson is an ex-driver, and he's this old guy who drives sedans around an airport sort of test field. And he can evaluate the skill of a driver in about one lap.

And he's just a genius, a true driving genius. And he has played a role in driver choice and evaluation for a number of teams. And he's trained a great number of IndyCar and F1 and Rally and

The professional motorsports world is tremendously benefited and influenced by this person. To me, that was my opener when I met him. I was lucky. I spent some time at the track taking designs around in the mid-2000s.

and in the Brackley team and those race as love driving myself and train and the race engineers there who use him as a young driver evaluation in Brackley back in that time, hopefully they still do, introduced me to him. So I became good friends with Rob. I learned something about that evaluation.

I tried to get out of him a wire. These drivers are so much better than me. And he said, oh, they're not. It's just a bit of training. Because in the road car, I can do the same time as Rob or the drivers around the track.

I can't do it every single lap first try. I can do it most of the time. And that is maybe an example of the best drivers can get into any car, understand the tire at the limit right away all the time. So the true system for evaluating drivers, I don't know. I suspect, I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect it's as poor as it is in other sports, which is...

I have one of my college friends is the general manager of the Minnesota Vikings. How does he select the players? And the teams are famously terrible at it, right? Tom Brady, last pick in the draft. And I think soccer is pretty similar. So I think Formula One teams are...

Probably equally difficult. Marco, buriatori. So just look at the last cup of performance and say, oh, good enough. He scored points in a way that was like, must be good, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah. And just to digress, she actually sent a chat. So to remind you to remember to drink some water. Ah, that's too sweet. My blood sugar is spiking now. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Wow. So lovely. Yeah, okay. Back to the maybe driver selection. We've seen like...

how Dr. Helm and Marco do the selection process and also the, you know, banishing them to the second team process. I totally disagree with his approach. You know, my personal preference is that brutal environment. I love it. That's a failure of a concept.

People don't do their best work when they're treated that way. You treat them like that and they're going to overcome maybe, but they're not going to succeed. Look at Albon. What a joke how they missed. Wouldn't they give to have Albon in that seat? That's a flawed idea how to run an organization. Treat people well. They need to perform. You expect excellence and you have consequences. You make them comfortable. You don't...

tell them they're going to fail beforehand. That's wrong. It does seem like a really toxic environment to be working in. Speaking of toxic environment, so as a fan of Formula 1, I have a very tough question for you. If you get to run the Ferrari team...

What can we do to make it back to the champion? It's been 20 years. You wait another 20 years. Good luck. Just look at history. Why were Michael Ross and John Todd so successful? Not Italian? No.

Well, I left out the key Italian. Luca de Montezemolo was focused on winning. He allowed John Tott to insulate the team from the pressure. I think most people could not relate to the pressure that the Italians feel.

it's a national pride and responsibility to succeed. Yeah, I was a bit shocked. You know, just some lowly junior aerodynamicist in Honda, I walk into a pub in England and, you know, somebody starts commenting on my professional work.

It's like, whoa, think of that in Italy and it's times 100. We were stopped by the police in the car and instead of giving a ticket, he sees the Ferrari badge and says, oh, it's an honor to be speaking to you. Please have a pleasant day and I'd like you to get to work quickly and safely. And that's just the way it is there. So with that context, there is not...

calmness and support the idea of no blame culture is completely laughable in Italy it's the exact opposite you said comfortable environment that's something they don't have at all no

No. So, you know, there's an extraordinary resource there and great passion and intelligence and effort. But the cohesion of the top management down to middle management and there I include well below technical director. You need everybody on board first.

thoroughly, fundamentally. And people get on board if you bring them with them. It's not a command and control that will work. It has to be people believing in and working together. So too much allowance for personal gain and manipulation is

So how to fix it, it's a big job, but it starts with the Vigna needs to set the tone, then Team Prince. I think it's got to cascade down from the top and let the people adjust and adapt to the new way. And it's going to take a generation of workers. Generation. Yes. Yes.

Well, there's already been like two generations, so it couldn't hurt for another. But not of stability and trust and support. So they may get close, and there's a lot that's great about them, but I don't see an easy path to the top. The other way for them to win is the other teams to mess up. Okay. Yeah. I guess they need a multiple...

I'm talking about beating people at the top of their game. But then, of course, you see strife in Red Bull. Mercedes hasn't recovered as well as they should. So the competition isn't a constant is what I'm saying. So, you know, I root for Ferrari. I want them to do well because we had so many great years there. But organizationally, you've got to support each other. And I don't see them doing that.

Okay, so in conclusion, you don't see any hope yet, but you're hoping for something to happen. There's no rational hope. Irrational hope. Yeah. Well, they did come close to winning the Constructor Championship last year. And...

Oh yeah, by the way, how do you think... And Vettel driving into the tire barrier in 2017, right? 2018 Germany. 18, 18, okay. That was a day that never happened, right? And also 2017, that was the Singapore Grand Prix, which never happened. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's enough, that's enough. We have this tough time every week now. So how do you think Fedvisser, two years now, do you think he's done a good job, bad job? I don't know. I don't know.

clear step up, clear improvement. Okay. Yeah. That'll say something without saying the thing. I just don't think, you know, Bonota was effective. You know, it was too many yes men, too many politic, what we just talked about. But Fred, I don't know. I don't know enough about it as a

relate to the... He's got a pretty good track history. It seems very sensible. It seems good. I don't think the way he handled that Hamilton radio incident was convincing at all. I think it was terrible. I don't know the facts though, right? It could be very different behind the scenes. Okay, so how about let's go into the... How do we call this? Reading Super Chat section. So this is the part like we have a lot of fans and watching the live stream will be sending in questions. So maybe we can talk about some of them. So...

we thank Chun Chun Da Noob. Okay, so basically the username translates to totally noob. Says, hello. He's asking about, ooh. The next podcast guest has showed up. Yes, a brief hello. Hi, Navier. Hi, Navier. Hi, Navier. I'll see you in a few minutes.

Okay. Pardon me. Yeah. Sorry. His boss is calling him. We got to wrap this up. Yeah. Right. So he's asking, so F1 aero and like... Sailing. Sailing aero design. Is there a lot of similarities between them? Yes. So America's Cup is, you know, tremendously interesting for me. I've been a fan my whole life. My father's from Auckland, so grew up a sailor. So I...

know the history very well from a fan's perspective and one of the great challenges in America's Cup is lack of consistency because there's only the competition every it kind of used to alternate three to four years and and a couple of years is quite a long time yeah exactly and then moreover like financial

financially, it's more like you put together a campaign. It's not that you have a permanent company. And so it's a lot of start, stop. And if you all of a sudden have to build a boat to compete in two, three years' time, you rewind to all the steps. That's very little time. So you don't have time to develop the tools and so the infrastructure. So it's like being the worst F1 team on the grid every single time.

And one of the things that's evolved is they're getting away from that. Team New Zealand is exceptionally good at both their innovative thinking and focus on what's relevant to producing the race winning boat.

So this good integration between Sailors and design team, but also now getting a lot more consistency. And INEOS was on the track to having that before it all exploded in the last few months.

So my understanding is it's just arrogance and, and personality clashes between Ratcliffe and Ainsley. Again, I know nothing about these people, so I have no idea who's at fault or whatever, but sad because there's a lot of engineers who were doing these jobs that who knows what they're going to do now. But yeah,

the topside aerodynamics is extremely similar, the subsonic, you know, meaning low speed aerodynamics. And then some of the technical challenges of the hydrodynamics are, you know,

Yeah, in detail different, but in engineering process, very, very similar. So very exciting for an F1 engineer to think about and would love to work on. And perhaps I have no regrets in my professional career. I don't feel I missed anything other than think, oh, wow, I...

if I made a different choice, if I would have, uh, give up something to, to work on an America's Cup would be fun. They're really cool boats. Okay. Yeah. We, we saw Alison just going, going there. Um, okay. So next question. He did give up, uh, for that job. Yeah. So I think we can, uh, wrap up, uh, with this last question before we set you free for your duty. Uh, so I think there's a lot of, uh,

audience would like to know this question might be a little bit sensitive for you so you can choose to answer in any way you like they want to know the difference between Gunther and are you as team principal yeah speaking of people you know well it's it's very interesting right because um the and what is the right team principal probably very different for Mercedes uh

back of the grid. You know, I shouldn't say back of the grid because Haas isn't back of the grid. Doesn't want to be. It's midfield right now. Yeah. Yeah. But so, so, you know, everything is context and what you need is a bit different. But Gunther deserves a tremendous amount of credit for building the team. Um,

you know, convincing Gene to go racing. We still don't really know what Gene's motivation is. Uh, I don't know him well. Um, so mysterious. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, um, uh, that can't be simple in terms of, uh, inner interacting. So I disagree very strongly with a lot of the details of how Gunter managed a team. Uh,

I think it was a huge performance limitation for us, but the team wouldn't exist without his effort and he did a lot. And then, of course, you see this evolution of team principal into character drive to survive.

But that was not, um, that was intentional. You know, that was a strategy he employed and probably, I don't know if it's successful commercially to bring in sponsors or not, but it, um, it was not, uh,

passive choice by Gunter. So what I owe is different is an engineer and a more direct addressing of, you know, there are a lot of difficult choices and trade-offs you have to make. And again, I disagreed with a lot of them as I was probably uninformed, right? It's not like I knew the full picture.

So I have respect for those choices that were made, but it seems like IO makes different approach and that's where it's good. Maybe it's that, maybe it's also the engineering structure necessarily evolves underneath when the person moves up, who comes in and fills and maybe they evolve and do a better job.

Right. So even as something as simple as that, is it improvement in the new or is it filling in from below? So one thing I'm very proud about is, you know, I spent so much energy building the team. Like I mentioned, Ben Agathangelo before, both of us, how much can that carry on without us? And I don't just mean I don't try to take credit for on track work.

performance, but also of the aerodynamic function and the quality of the department. And that's something you need to look carefully to see and look. So hopefully that gives you a bit of a flavor, but you see big difference between Andrea Stella approach and

and whoever. So it's nice to see all the things that James Vowles is talking about. Another friend from my past who I know well and I have a lot of respect for. Chester is a big, big fan of James.

He appraised everything he says. Well, because, you know, he puts, um, yeah, he's a serious technical engineer, but he's, um, he knows he needed to change the image of the team. So he talks too much to the media for my taste. Uh, you know, it's, it's too much, but that's what the team needs. And he's intelligent and he's, it's not just, it's not just media talk. It's real action. You know, he knows what they need. He,

It's a fine balance, right? How do you manage it and how outspoken to the media you want to be? And so it's similar to the way I did the... My approach with running the aerodynamics department was very unusual compared to my competitors or colleagues. I communicate...

I had the excuse of being an American and we're more open than Europeans. And we just communicate plainly. So I would talk to my group weekly and explain, this is what we think we understand about the car, why we think we're fast and slow in these conditions and circumstances. Here's what we think we understand and here's what we're going to do about it. And I would explicitly, and a lot of people do that, but I was very, very consistent about it.

And I also talked about expected behavior, which is I don't control the way people behave. They set their own way of acting. But I do explain explicitly the culture we want and, you know,

very serious, very precise engineer, and that's what I expected out of people, that they knew that my absolute priority, the way we treated other colleagues, and meaning if they are helpful to their colleagues, we'll make progress. And this idea of empathy, if you can think about your colleagues' needs and what they need to do their job well, we will get more efficient, faster, better.

And I had zero tolerance for selfishness. And that comes through. So that's a detail that propagates. And that's how I would approach being kind of a team principal. Sounds very American style. Yeah, it's a bit different than European style. Yeah, pretty direct. No bullshit. Yeah, I was thinking about it. I was going to say that.

Yes. And so fine, that's my preference. But I have to blend that with the reality that I'm working with a lot of Europeans who have a very different way. And you can't just say this is I'm American tough. I'm the boss. We're doing it. No. So we we blend it all together. And that's what works.

And that's where we got the great performance out of a Chinese person, out of a Japanese person, Italian, French, and whatever, British. Okay. All right. We still got loads of questions, but I think this one would set it forward today. We hope to have you maybe back in a future episode. Such an interesting and a deep dive into all the... Insightful. Yeah, everything. Yes, as a fan. Yes.

SFN, I love that phrasing because, you know, obviously... From now on, we should keep saying, you know, before we want to say something controversial, we say SFN. That's my personal opinion. No, like I say, I really don't mind being...

You know, making my own opinion on things. It's just to me, that's part of the interest is how much do we really know? Because I care about the truth. And I wish I knew. I wish I could say as an expert, I know why Mercedes is fast.

But anyway, let's enjoy these races coming up and see if Piastri and Palo... Oh, go watch IndyCars, guys. Yeah, IndyCars. Go watch IndyCars. See how good Palo is. Indy 500 is an exceptionally difficult circuit to set a car up well. Tremendous skill and a lot more bravery than anybody in F1.

yeah I mean Roman said he wouldn't do oval racing at first right so yeah with that said I think this is it for this episode and we haven't actually done this in English before so please like and subscribe also please try to

five stars review on Himalaya. - Oh, this sounds so weird. - Yeah, it sounds so weird. - It doesn't work in English with this intro. Anyways, we saved some super chats and if we have a chance to talk to Aaron again next time, we will answer these questions. Well, no, Aaron will, hopefully. So yeah, thank you for your time. It's the job of being the father started now.

All right. Take care. Thank you, guys. Thank you. And for this episode, goodbye. Bye-bye. Wow, that's fast. Bye-bye.