©Toro Rosso
DEFINING PRIORITIES
French avant-garde painter Francis Picabia once said: “Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction.” Would this mean that F1 technical directors have square heads? Because their task is often described as setting a course for the engineers in the design office and making sure to stick to it. Concretely, how does the technical department operate?
“In very broad terms, you sit down with your reports, and you would make clear what targets and objectives we have, for starters,” Key added. “What are our strengths and weaknesses? How are we going to overcome them? What do we think the best cars on the grid are doing in these areas? How do we need to get there?
“You have got a first understanding of what you are trying to achieve. And then you can set loose objectives and targets: ‘We really have to concentrate on this bit, this is pretty good as it is so let’s just improve upon it’, and you have sort of set a picture of what you want to do for a given year.
“Then, there are strategic decisions, this is how will you allocate your resources to different types of developments? How do you prioritise them? Whether you are addressing weaknesses or whether you are finding something completely different to take an advantage. Have you got the budget to do all of that? Often not because engineers have plenty of ideas.
“Then you have to direct in a way to say ‘Fundamentally these are our priorities, let’s put all our efforts into this’. You’ve got the following year, if that means a set of new regulations you’ve got to come up with a decision on how to split the years, what the best for this season versus next season is, etc.
“That is a massive generalisation, but really you’re looking at the whole picture, and you say the best thing for this team short-term is this, long-term is this – they’ll often be different – and you try to find a balance between the two.”
