Best Director

[Crash and Burn]

Who is your best Technical Director and why?

[Crash and Burn]

RB Ferrari - to me he earns his hugh wage packet - no mater the situation they have only messed up the odd time - sadly when they do they do.

[Vipernoir]

Patrick Head.

Who else has been around that long and still at the top ?
The man has done everything from Cossie kit-car through Ground Effects, Turbos and Gizmos up to the present day, and has won in all era's.

[I Ate Yoko Ono]

Originally posted by Vipernoir
"Patrick Head.

Who else has been around that long and still at the top ?
The man has done everything from Cossie kit-car through Ground Effects, Turbos and Gizmos up to the present day, and has won in all era's."

Newey has done all those things and been a champcar winning tech director too, so he gets my vote - not least because Patrick Head owes half his success to Newey anyway.

[Vipernoir]

Why didn't March win anything then ? Was it because Newey was too theoretical in his approach to designing a car. Regardless of that, it was Head who honed Adrian into the finshed article.

Patrick was one of only two people to really understand ground effects, and the other was Gordon Murray who almost deserves a mention for the Fan Car alone.

[paulzinho]

Originally posted by Crash and Burn
RB Ferrari - to me he earns his hugh wage packet - no mater the situation they have only messed up the odd time - sadly when they do they do.

Ditto that.

[I Ate Yoko Ono]

Originally posted by Vipernoir
"Why didn't March win anything then ? Was it because Newey was too theoretical in his approach to designing a car. Regardless of that, it was Head who honed Adrian into the finshed article."

I assume you are referring to the March/Leyton House F1 car. With which March had a comprehensively faster Judd V8 powered car than Williams did at the same time. Go take a look at results 1988-89, especially French GP. If you are referring to March Indycars then you are very much mistaken, they are one of the all time greats. However I think you'll find Newey had a spell at Lola in any case.

Head did nothing to hone Newey. In the end he just ****ed him off actually. Newey is one of a kind and it is no coincidience that William's fortunes took a nose dive after he left....in direct simultaneous contrast to McLaren's fortunes when he arrived....

[Vipernoir]

You are getting your years confused - Capelli should have won the 1990 French GP, but he didn't...

In '88 (the only year they shared an engine) March outscored Williams by 2 points to beat them to 6th in the championship. This was mainly down to the fact that Williams ran with active suspension up until the Saturday of the British GP - halfway through the season. While it may have cost them a handful of points in a season that they were never going to do anything in anyway, it certainly laid the groundwork for 1992 when the active came good.
Far from the March being comprehensivly faster, I would suggest that the Williams was in fact the faster car. Mansell got one fastest lap and two front row starts in '88, while the best Capelli could do was a 3rd on the grid.

Mclaren certainly did benefit from the presence of Newey from '98 on, but it should also be pointed out that the '97 car was not too shabby, and the Ilmor engine had more horsies than anyone else. Now that Ilmor are only producing pony power and there are other more powerful motors on the grid, where are the McLarens from wonderboy ?

[I Ate Yoko Ono]

But Williams had Mansell and about 10 times the money of March in 1988. No, with the budget and drivers they had Newey must be seen as having done a better job.

Look at Williams prior to Newey in the 1980s - 1982, 3 & 4 only one win. This was at a time that John Barnard, Gordon Murray, Steve Nicholls and Harvey Postlethwaite were all outperforming him with existing technology, not to mention innovating more.

Just can't rate Head higher than about no.6 or 7 in my books.

Sorry but there it is.