Originally posted by qvn
I realize that beside driving a car he needs to be able to understand the technology to guide his engineers to develop a car suit his driving style and make his car faster.
Actually qvn, after replying to you a few hours ago (see above) I've just remembered this is your thread, and so I want to press the point home again.
I have selected your quote above to hopefully answer in a better way, as I am unsure if you misunderstand what I'm trying to say.
And what I am trying to say is, no a driver does not need to understand the technology to develop a car.
What value a driver brings in the realm of car-development is completely academic to addressing the quote above, because a driver does not have to have any understanding at all of the technicalities to be able to give feedback.
A good example is when drivers are tested (across all categories) you tend to find the team will send the driver out on one or more runs with the same set-up, then make at least one change without telling the driver they have done so. (He may be out of the car and out of the garage in a briefing or something, away form the car). The aim is to see if the driver comes back to the pits and tells the crew that the car was doing something different on the last run. It could be better, it could be worse. He doesn't need to know what adjustment the crew made to be able to say if the car handled any different on a run. That is something that shows a driver has nouse, when they can return to the garage and say "Hang on guys, did you change something?"
All drivers of course have at least a limited working knowledge of at least some active devices (engine, gearbox etc) and some that are static but can be adjusted (wings, springs etc) but they don't necessarily know the manual inside-out, so to speak. You'll often hear drivers suggest adding wing etc.
Correct me if I am wrong (I really don't think I am) but the opening gambit to this thread appears to be that you are querying the viability of a driver steering development of a car so that it is tailor-made to suit him and his driving style etc.
And that I seriously believe does not happen in 2008. Car development is not a matter of addressing the same issues as during a race weekend or driver-test session. Car development of course isn't about suggesting the car needs more wing (for example) to be more efficient etc. It's about real wholesale changes or philosophies. Development is about literally going back to the drawing board and modifying designs or going down a totally different route with the overall car package. A driver simply can't make this happen. Parts come from incredibly complex CAD design technology and spring into life and are then put through their paces in the wind-tunnel. Anything that looks poor in the tunnel will never make it as far as the car. There's really nothing a driver can do other than test a part that has been put on the car, which has given good results in the tunnel, and see if it correlates to on-track performance. How many times have we heard drivers saying they can't wait for a new part to be introduced at the next race as they hope the car will make a leap forward? You never hear a driver say they can't wait to use the new part they developed or got the team to build. Funnily enough Heinz-Harald Frentzen once begged Jordan to put a certain part on the car and they refused. He was adamant it would make the car betterand so offered to pay out of his own pocket to have a stock of the particular design built into a live part. Still the team flat refused to accomodate his request. That shows pretty much what the designers think of a drivers comments sometimes...
Another question really is as to whether drivers have ever really steered car development. Even looking back for example to the Colin Chapman era. His drivers may have shouted at him to make changes to the cars, especially when they were literally falling to pieces, but as far as I know there was never any suggestion that the drivers somehow influenced what path Chapman took - other than a demand the car could actually finish a race and in one piece!
