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My biggest mistake as an F1 engineer

• grault 9y ago
  Linkedin demanded me to log in to read.. I'd be happy to read this w/o logging in / registering. Are you aware of a non-Linkedin link?
  • purrcat259 9y ago
    I read it on android via Materialistic just fine. I don't even have a LI account
    • grault 9y ago
      Iinteresting.. Lynx/Curl gave me the page straight away, Chrome though keeps redirecting me to the "register or login" page. edit -- It's some Javascript based redirect, I can see this in curl: ... "baseRedirect":"https://www.linkedin.com/uas/login?session_redirect="}--> https://www.linkedin.com/uas/login?session_redirect="}--> ... I'm not investigating further.
  • owlninja 9y ago
    Worked fine for me on Chrome
    • snowcrshd 9y ago
      Same on Safari, didn't have to login to read.
  • c3833174 9y ago
    Works for me on Firefox
    • chopin 9y ago
      With noscript on...
  • mjpa 9y ago
    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qiRgB16KWO4J:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-i-learned-from-my-biggest-mistake-f1-engineer-andrew-latham&num=1&client=opera&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qiRgB16...
• haydenlee 9y ago
  Oh F1 as in cars. I clicked thinking F1 Student Visa.
  • chesterc 9y ago
    How can a visa become an engineer, make mistakes and write about them?
    • TallGuyShort 9y ago
      F1 engineer = "engineer on an F1 visa"?
      • chesterc 9y ago
        German engineer = Engineer on a German visa?
        • sqeaky 9y ago
          Delicious Taco = Taco on a Delicious visa?
        • TallGuyShort 9y ago
          And would you be that surprised if said engineer didn't speak English perfectly?
• Mithaldu 9y ago
  Short version: He didn't fuel Raikkonen's car up enough which forced an early pit stop in the second-to-last lap of the race. However at the end of the race they placed the same as they had planned, and they had for the laps before the pit stop the advantage of having a stress-free race due to being in pole position. And the lesson he learned from that: Don't stick to the rules too closely, but also try to see if breaking some rules can have positive side effects. Experiment. Not a fun read. Very badly written as he constantly leaves out the consequences and details of decisions and circumstances, or only mentions them paragraphs later.
  • fredley 9y ago
    The lesson wasn't "Don't stick to the rules", it was "Capitalise on your mistakes". He didn't plan to underfuel the car, but when he did there were lessons to be learned.
    • Mithaldu 9y ago
      The rules would've been "don't do it again and move on".
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • rconti 9y ago
    It was overall a pretty terrible read. Likely because he's not allowed to share full details of what exactly happened. Running a light fuel load in quali was a well-known strategy, and it's one they would have modeled in simulations. Likewise, avoiding first-lap (and particularly first-corner) collisions by qualifying as high up as possible is similarly a well-known strategy. Finally, they obviously know the money they get from being on pole. The article doesn't bother explaining why the real-world outcome was different from what was modeled, so it's hard to gain any insight from it.
• fredley 9y ago
  I'd be interested if anyone has any anecdotes that compare from software engineering. Sending a car out with suspension thingamies still attached seems like the equivalent of pushing a build to production with `DEBUG = True`, and I'm not sure much useful can be learned by you in that situation.
  • pjc50 9y ago
    If you don't learn something from pushing a debug build to production, your debug build isn't instrumented enough. Maybe all you learn is what the effect of building with/without optimisation is on the real workload. There's practically an entire genre of "here's what I learned from my expensive mistake" stories. Usually they teach humility and caution. This one is interesting because it's a variant of YAGNI. Imagine that you've carefully tuned your (software/car) for a specific set of parameters, then throw one out of whack by mistake - does this get caught by monitoring? Do you even notice? If you hillclimb from the new status to an optimal one, do you get back to the same local optimum? Then of course there's the famous RISKS digest, which can be funny or depressing depending on your mood and dependence on complex systems. (My own personal one of these? "killall" behaves differently on Solaris than it does on Linux ..)
    • lathiat 9y ago
      I'd also strongly suggest not typing "exit" into kdb, the Solaris debugger when it is in write mode. It sets the global pointer for exit (the libc function) to NULL and the whole system will crash a few seconds to minutes later when the next process exits. (It's not uncommon to use this tool to reconfigure some configuration values at runtime) At least not on Solaris 10 or any of the open source derivatives. Seems it was special cased at some point in Solaris 11. Had to make that mistake 2-3 times before I finally realised what I was doing to crash it given the slight delay.
      • oblio 9y ago
        Solaris, the system were ease of use is an enemy.
• dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  The story was interesting but the conclusion was basically "and that was my long winded way of telling you to learn from your mistakes" which was pretty meh IMO but it got me thinking. I wonder how long it will be before AI can take common generic advice such as "learn from your mistakes" and data about someone and generate a coherent article like this one.
  • nickrivadeneira 9y ago
    "Learn from your mistakes" is an over simplification. Typically that means "if you make a mistake, figure out a way to not make it again". Instead, the lesson here is to find opportunities in the outcomes of your mistake. Additionally, build that philosophy into your organization.
• mickronome 9y ago
  There is quite a bit of research that implies that the most influential action you can take to make a software team more productive in terms of both quality and quantity is to build a culture that is a close sibling to what he describes. Add in a little more of a socially supportive environment into the professional mindset depicted in the article to adapt it to software develop ent. Psychosocial well-being is essentially dependent on social support, and it has been shown to improve creative problem solving. Sometimes improving performance to such a degree that it makes it hard to believe.
  • digi_owl 9y ago
    Good luck with that when employees are treated basically like yet another raw material in the production cycle.
  • koomi 9y ago
    > There is quite a bit of research that implies that the most influential action you can take to make a software team more productive in terms of both quality and quantity is to build a culture that is a close sibling to what he describes. Can you give us some pointers to said research? I'd love to see the details.
    • YCode 9y ago
      Google's Project Aristotle came to similar conclusions, you might look into that. The rough TL;DR is good teams have all members speak up when necessary and good psychological safety, defined as the feeling that you can be wrong and you wont be rejected, punished or embarrassed for it.
• zwieback 9y ago
  Over the years I've done R&D as well as manufacturing engineering. The closer you are to the manufacturing end the tighter the processes are nailed down, you should still learn for your mistakes but at all times have a controlled default. I'd say the F1 race is like that as well, if the low fuel case was not tried before, which surprises me, it should be a wake up call for the upstream R&D guys to better cover their process space. For the guys on race day it's a sign that process monitoring needs to be improved. Anyway, everyone should benefit in the end and most places I've been have had this attitude. When it comes to learning from your mistakes individuals have a wide set of reactions, though, and it's sometimes tough to swallow your pride and debug the problem in front of you instead of quickly moving on and trying again.
  • woliveirajr 9y ago
    I don't read it as this wasn't tested before in R&D, but perhaps it was and gave no advantage, so was not considered. The mistake allowed them to look for other positive aspects that weren't considered before:taking the pole in circuits where the first corner is complicated and messy can be a big advantage (less risk of collision and ending the race in the same position is something good). Also making all those companies who pay a lot of money to put stickers on your car a little happier.
• pmontra 9y ago
  > before the race weekend, all our simulations, which had been firmly plotted around a more conventional qualifying strategy, had told us we were likely to finish third. That was 2006. Do anybody have information about to the software racing teams use to simulate race strategies and how many GPs they test? Thanks.
  • TallGuyShort 9y ago
    Big Monte Carlo simulations, and I'd expect them to test every GP. Based on where they qualify they have pre-computed decisions about when to pit / change tire types, etc. under various conditions, like a safety car on lap 10, etc. See: http://www.canopysimulations.com/ http://www.canopysimulations.com/. Not sure how many of the teams use that specific software, but the computing side of F1 is actually a big deal: the rules place not only place limits on the car design, but on the teraflops used to design it.
    • jecel 9y ago
      Monte Carlo simulations are particularly important for the Monaco GP ;-)
      • TallGuyShort 9y ago
        Which is actually true! The next best thing you can do at that track besides getting pole is to time the stops perfectly to maximize off-track passing, and that's what the simulations generally focus on.
    • angus-prune 9y ago
      I didn't know that there were mandated limits on processing power. Do you have any more info on this? What processing are there limits on? Is it just the wind tunnel equivalence (Were there limits on wind tunnel time back in the day?)? Is it just pre-manufacturing simulations or do they limit the sort race simulations that we're talking about here?
      • 9y ago
• djaychela 9y ago
  I was expecting an error considerably larger than a fuel calculation which ended up giving a better race strategy in terms of surviving the first corner, and netted the same position overall as predicted! I used to prepare my own rally car (up to WRC level), and made many mistakes much bigger than that, but I guess that explains why he works for an F1 team and I'm currently looking for job!
  • sqeaky 9y ago
    What did you learn from those mistakes? Did you learn how to not make them again or possibly even something else beneficial? I think you might have missed the point of the article. Excellence is not in avoiding mistakes, Excellence is learning from mistakes so you can do better next time.
• coldcode 9y ago
  Or you can do what we do at BiglyCorp, have an absolute shitshow release where 250,000 customers crashed. Then act as if nothing happened and go along doing the same things that caused the shitshow. If you don't learn from mistakes, you've optimized for mistakes.
  • DanHulton 9y ago
    God, that's a really good turn of phrase.
  • throwaway-sorry 9y ago
    Could be worse. I still wake up sweating thinking about a former job where several million identities were stolen. Tech staff tried to prevent it, even predicting high risk of mistake, but management pushed through it anyway. A business mess is one thing, but losing somebody's identity is another level of feeling shitty.
• MR4D 9y ago
  At first glance, this might seem like "learn from your mistakes". But after thinking about it, this article is much more. Put simply, nothing will ever go perfectly right, and nothing will ever go perfectly wrong. In any situation, there will be things that you want to see happen again, and things you'd like to get rid of. In Formula 1, that probably happens often. This is an engineer's take on what that's like in one of the most demanding sports (business) on the planet.
• lisper 9y ago
  > one of the mechanics mistakenly left a set-up packer in the suspension system of one of our grand prix cars What is a set-up packer?
  • iDemonix 9y ago
    I believe it 'packs out' the suspension to essentially disable it if they're doing any maintenance that requires it.
    • jhpankow 9y ago
      Yes it locks it in place so the car doesn't move during transport. F1 cars derive so much of their suspension movement from the flexing of the tyre wall that the car is still drivable.
• water42 9y ago
  why does linkedin have articles
  • castle-bravo 9y ago
    So people can self-promote (e.g. OP).
• LoSboccacc 9y ago
  Now I want to see an Honda F1 engineer followup
  • benoliver999 9y ago
    Would be really interesting to hear about how they passed off an engine from a 1983 Mini as a 2017 F1 car.
• walshemj 9y ago
  Interesting the local f1 team RBR (red bull) a couple of years ago had two DNF's from not correctly managing the fuel load. I did do a spec job application always wondered if I would have pointed out that as a mistake that I would have not made more than once :-) BTW my first job was at the worlds leading rnd organisations in fluid dynamics which is also nearby on campus at cranfield
• BusinessInsider 9y ago
  Can someone explain this to me? I'm only familiar with the current regulations and so the logic of this paragraph doesn't make sense to me: > Back in 2006, the regulations required teams to qualify their cars with race fuel-loads. The trade-offs were obvious – load the car up with fuel and you’d end up further down the grid, but with the benefit and flexibility of adjusting your strategy in the race. By contrast, qualify on petrol fumes and you had a good chance to be quick on Saturday, but you’d theoretically start the race with one hand tied behind your back.
  • ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    There's a tradeoff to be made with amount of fuel loaded into the car. If you put more fuel in the car, it weighs more, and so will corner and accelerate worse and have worse lap times. On the other hand, it'll have more fuel, so it won't need to make a pit stop as soon. Qualifying laps are structured differently from the actual race itself, in a way that incentivizes putting less fuel in the car. Essentially, only the qualifying lap times matter, and not the advantages from having more fuel loaded. The obvious strategy is to put the bare minimum in the tank for qualifying, and more during the start of the actual race. The new regulations forbid that strategy - you're allowed no more fuel to start the race than you had used to start the qualifying laps.
  • jakub_g 9y ago
    In the last years, no refueling stop were allowed during the race, so everyone just loaded the same amount of fuel for the race. However, previously, there was refueling possible during the race, which allowed for some strategy variation: - either you start with small amount of fuel, gain advantage due to lighter car (~1s faster per lap), and refuel early in the race (probably 2 refueling stops needed in such case) - or start with bigger amount of fuel and stay longer on the track, but only do 1 stop for refueling Also, since you needed to start the race and qualifications with same amount of fuel, going with less-fuel-and-double-refuel strategy meant you were more likely to win a pole position due to lighter car during qualifications.
• juanuys 9y ago
  The article is behind a sign-up page. Alternative?