4 ms·

He still uses pen and paper - there is a staff of 3 engineers that takes his doodles and designs and inputs them into the CAD program Red Bull F1 team uses. Hi

He still uses pen and paper - there is a staff of 3 engineers that takes his doodles and designs and inputs them into the CAD program Red Bull F1 team uses. His PA prints out his emails on paper and leaves a stack on his desk. When asked he said he is more efficient this way and he is bloody Adrian Newey - he is also a very good racing driver so he can "speak" the same language as their drivers.

benhurmarcel 4y ago
Having a dedicated CAD person handling the 3d tool for the designer isn't unusual. Efficiently manipulating complex CAD tools is a full time job in itself. I worked as a mechanical design engineer in aerospace and we always had technicians working basically full time on the digital mock-up, modelling designs produced and explained on paper, or commonly in paint.exe or Powerpoint even...
mhh__ 4y ago
When it comes to the emails and stuff he probably isn't more efficient that way at all it's just that he's still delivering value so people put up with it. The pen and paper is interesting but it must be just conceptual because racing cars get certain dimensions done by a machine rather than by hand then analyzed e.g. the vehicle dynamicists would lay down the rough suspension geometry
- blitzar 4y ago
  Perhaps the real geniuses are the 3 engineers who take the cocktail napkins and make them fit on a car. The giant lego set of 15,000 pieces that is a F1 car is too great for any one person and a pen and paper to take all the credit for. In a way I feel like the 3 engineers should really have gotten a shout out somewhere in the puff piece.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    This is the classic 'who is smarter: architects or engineers' argument and I don't suggest you try to solve it on a forum full of software architects and engineers.
    - blitzar 4y ago
      I think its important that both parties acknoledge they are dependant on each other. Either party claiming they are the one true god and the other party just feed off thier scraps has been the cause of many bad outcomes (and terrible f1 cars - a few of which carried the Newey name).
  - jack_pp 4y ago
    They probably don't make the car from scratch every season. Pen and paper is perfectly fine for small tweaks and conceptual ideas for very specific parts
    - tibbydudeza 4y ago
      He does not work on the entire car anymore - it is too much work - think he provides overall direction to be followed (high rake/low rake) and then concentrates on the areas he can add value. Since he came from that era where ground effects played a role in F1 he probably focused on the bottom of the car this year (floor) hence they had less issues with bouncing than other teams. You will notice he attends most races - he sits on the pitwall.
      - blitzar 4y ago
        Pitwall is all for show ... Team boss Toto Wolff does not sit on the pit wall, instead preferring a seat in the garage at the central console overseeing operations
        jonwachob91 4y ago
        Toto Wolff is also not an engineering or race oriented team boss, he's a finance guy. He lets the engineers and race experts do their thing while he does his thing.
        VBprogrammer 4y ago
        I've no doubt the reason he is there is because he enjoys being at the races, not because of how it looks.
      - remus 4y ago
        > He does not work on the entire car anymore - it is too much work - think he provides overall direction to be followed (high rake/low rake) and then concentrates on the areas he can add value. This has been the way it goes for a long time now. The engineering teams that work on f1 cars are huge (though less so now with the cost caps that came in to effect this season) so no one knows every aspect of the car in full detail. Same as with any large engineering project really. What someone like Newey brings to the team is working out how the whole thing fits together, identifying the most productive areas of the car to work on (to find more speed) and troubleshooting issues with the car that come up through the season.
  - cptcobalt 4y ago
    > the cocktail napkins This isn't a fair characterization — while I agree that one person isn't responsible for the whole assembly — Newey does have a gigantic drafting table in his office: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VXJtrz1m9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VXJtrz1m9Y
    - blitzar 4y ago
      Cocktail napkins have a great history of innovation. https://www.eandvgroup.com/the-cocktail-napkin-hall-of-fame/ https://www.eandvgroup.com/the-cocktail-napkin-hall-of-fame/
      - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
        And per 21CFR (https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?CFRPart=820 https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFR...), if you design part of a Medical Device on one, it must be signed and dated and recorded as part of the Design History File since it's now an Original Record :-)
  - JakDrako 4y ago
    One of Aston Martin's aerodynamicist is ex-Red Bull... the "B" version of this year's Aston Martin looks extremely similar to the Red Bull car. Aston have yet to match the performance of RB; although Vettel has placed the new car higher in the points that the "A" version. They've announced many new parts for this weekend's race; we'll see if AM can close the gap to the top teams with a Newey-trained (?) aerodynamicist who's not Newey and (presumably) has no access to him.
    - sjm-lbm 4y ago
      Peter Prodromou was one of those people working right under Newey during the 2010-2013 RBR run of success with Vettel, and he went to McLaren around 2014. His success there has been, well.. less than many would have hoped.
- mrcartmeneses 4y ago
  Reading something from a printed piece of paper is much more efficient than from a screen. Likewise a pen and old-school drawing tools are much faster and more expressive than cad. So why waste their best mind’s talent on screens and cad programs? Other, less valuable people can do the necessary interfacing with computers.
  - mhh__ 4y ago
    I was making a point about the value creation bit rather than the details of how Newey works. Spotting when that value goes away is something I'd be very worried about if I were business owner with older employees.
- bonestamp2 4y ago
  > When it comes to the emails and stuff he probably isn't more efficient that way at all I guess it depends on how he replies. But, I can't count the number of times I sit down at my computer to do one specific task and I end up doing countless other things first. The paper method at least removes the distractions.
- ccnngig 4y ago
  You say "just conceptual", but the contribution of senior engineers and (software) architects is usually a diagram, not a detailed blueprint. That's true for (real) architects as well—they'll certainly review the finished CAD drawings when that is necessary, but at the point when they actually work out a design detail or a strategy, it will be on paper, in a diagram or sketch.
- keithalewis 4y ago
  Says not Adrian Newey. That's what fish enjoy! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_Shi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_Shi
xattt 4y ago
Tangential: I recently started work with an architect to look at completing a residential addition. He says he still drafts on paper and AutoCAD, and has a person on staff to input his plans into Revit. I feel this speaks more about someone that’s at ease with the tools he knows, rather than someone that’s enamoured with new tools.
- borroka 4y ago
  In the 1990s I attended a technical high school. We did technical drawing by hand (and by square) until the fourth year, and then we switched to CAD, mainly because the school had purchased a good number of computers with intel i386 and i486 processors--there was some competition to use 486s, let me tell you. CAD was also starting to become popular among architects and professional engineers; for the new generation it was the tool of choice, while for the older generation it was a tool to be skeptical about. Drawing by hand when CAD is available is a waste of time. It is just that the "old" professionals, genius or not, do not want to learn the new technology and look for any foothold that can justify their staying in the technological past.
- dijonman2 4y ago
  Simplicity wins every time when it comes to sustainability.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It also allows a wonderful task division - the person who's "good with computers" can do the computer stuff, the person who is good with design can do the design stuff. We pay insane amounts of money for professionals to do admin-style tasks, but the thought of hiring an admin assistant for them is simply out of the question.
amelius 4y ago
Imagine how productive he would be if he used a computer.
- criddell 4y ago
  Productivity matters for sure. I'd say it must be in the top 10 things professionals like Newey care about. It's certainly in the top 20 or at least the top 50.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  Computers are great, I'm sitting at a cafe working on my computer right now! If "looking at the comments on HN stories" counts as working. And every time my attention wanders from the applications where things that unambiguously count as working happen, it's got the entire Internet to get lost in. I've never been more productive!

benhurmarcel 4y ago

Having a dedicated CAD person handling the 3d tool for the designer isn't unusual. Efficiently manipulating complex CAD tools is a full time job in itself. I worked as a mechanical design engineer in aerospace and we always had technicians working basically full time on the digital mock-up, modelling designs produced and explained on paper, or commonly in paint.exe or Powerpoint even...

mhh__ 4y ago

When it comes to the emails and stuff he probably isn't more efficient that way at all it's just that he's still delivering value so people put up with it. The pen and paper is interesting but it must be just conceptual because racing cars get certain dimensions done by a machine rather than by hand then analyzed e.g. the vehicle dynamicists would lay down the rough suspension geometry

blitzar 4y ago
Perhaps the real geniuses are the 3 engineers who take the cocktail napkins and make them fit on a car. The giant lego set of 15,000 pieces that is a F1 car is too great for any one person and a pen and paper to take all the credit for. In a way I feel like the 3 engineers should really have gotten a shout out somewhere in the puff piece.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  This is the classic 'who is smarter: architects or engineers' argument and I don't suggest you try to solve it on a forum full of software architects and engineers.
  - blitzar 4y ago
    I think its important that both parties acknoledge they are dependant on each other. Either party claiming they are the one true god and the other party just feed off thier scraps has been the cause of many bad outcomes (and terrible f1 cars - a few of which carried the Newey name).
- jack_pp 4y ago
  They probably don't make the car from scratch every season. Pen and paper is perfectly fine for small tweaks and conceptual ideas for very specific parts
  - tibbydudeza 4y ago
    He does not work on the entire car anymore - it is too much work - think he provides overall direction to be followed (high rake/low rake) and then concentrates on the areas he can add value. Since he came from that era where ground effects played a role in F1 he probably focused on the bottom of the car this year (floor) hence they had less issues with bouncing than other teams. You will notice he attends most races - he sits on the pitwall.
    - blitzar 4y ago
      Pitwall is all for show ... Team boss Toto Wolff does not sit on the pit wall, instead preferring a seat in the garage at the central console overseeing operations
      - jonwachob91 4y ago
        Toto Wolff is also not an engineering or race oriented team boss, he's a finance guy. He lets the engineers and race experts do their thing while he does his thing.
      - VBprogrammer 4y ago
        I've no doubt the reason he is there is because he enjoys being at the races, not because of how it looks.
    - remus 4y ago
      > He does not work on the entire car anymore - it is too much work - think he provides overall direction to be followed (high rake/low rake) and then concentrates on the areas he can add value. This has been the way it goes for a long time now. The engineering teams that work on f1 cars are huge (though less so now with the cost caps that came in to effect this season) so no one knows every aspect of the car in full detail. Same as with any large engineering project really. What someone like Newey brings to the team is working out how the whole thing fits together, identifying the most productive areas of the car to work on (to find more speed) and troubleshooting issues with the car that come up through the season.
- cptcobalt 4y ago
  > the cocktail napkins This isn't a fair characterization — while I agree that one person isn't responsible for the whole assembly — Newey does have a gigantic drafting table in his office: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VXJtrz1m9Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VXJtrz1m9Y
  - blitzar 4y ago
    Cocktail napkins have a great history of innovation. https://www.eandvgroup.com/the-cocktail-napkin-hall-of-fame/ https://www.eandvgroup.com/the-cocktail-napkin-hall-of-fame/
    - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
      And per 21CFR (https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?CFRPart=820 https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFR...), if you design part of a Medical Device on one, it must be signed and dated and recorded as part of the Design History File since it's now an Original Record :-)
- JakDrako 4y ago
  One of Aston Martin's aerodynamicist is ex-Red Bull... the "B" version of this year's Aston Martin looks extremely similar to the Red Bull car. Aston have yet to match the performance of RB; although Vettel has placed the new car higher in the points that the "A" version. They've announced many new parts for this weekend's race; we'll see if AM can close the gap to the top teams with a Newey-trained (?) aerodynamicist who's not Newey and (presumably) has no access to him.
  - sjm-lbm 4y ago
    Peter Prodromou was one of those people working right under Newey during the 2010-2013 RBR run of success with Vettel, and he went to McLaren around 2014. His success there has been, well.. less than many would have hoped.
mrcartmeneses 4y ago
Reading something from a printed piece of paper is much more efficient than from a screen. Likewise a pen and old-school drawing tools are much faster and more expressive than cad. So why waste their best mind’s talent on screens and cad programs? Other, less valuable people can do the necessary interfacing with computers.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  I was making a point about the value creation bit rather than the details of how Newey works. Spotting when that value goes away is something I'd be very worried about if I were business owner with older employees.
bonestamp2 4y ago
> When it comes to the emails and stuff he probably isn't more efficient that way at all I guess it depends on how he replies. But, I can't count the number of times I sit down at my computer to do one specific task and I end up doing countless other things first. The paper method at least removes the distractions.
ccnngig 4y ago
You say "just conceptual", but the contribution of senior engineers and (software) architects is usually a diagram, not a detailed blueprint. That's true for (real) architects as well—they'll certainly review the finished CAD drawings when that is necessary, but at the point when they actually work out a design detail or a strategy, it will be on paper, in a diagram or sketch.
keithalewis 4y ago
Says not Adrian Newey. That's what fish enjoy! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_Shi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_Shi

xattt 4y ago

Tangential: I recently started work with an architect to look at completing a residential addition. He says he still drafts on paper and AutoCAD, and has a person on staff to input his plans into Revit. I feel this speaks more about someone that’s at ease with the tools he knows, rather than someone that’s enamoured with new tools.

borroka 4y ago
In the 1990s I attended a technical high school. We did technical drawing by hand (and by square) until the fourth year, and then we switched to CAD, mainly because the school had purchased a good number of computers with intel i386 and i486 processors--there was some competition to use 486s, let me tell you. CAD was also starting to become popular among architects and professional engineers; for the new generation it was the tool of choice, while for the older generation it was a tool to be skeptical about. Drawing by hand when CAD is available is a waste of time. It is just that the "old" professionals, genius or not, do not want to learn the new technology and look for any foothold that can justify their staying in the technological past.
dijonman2 4y ago
Simplicity wins every time when it comes to sustainability.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It also allows a wonderful task division - the person who's "good with computers" can do the computer stuff, the person who is good with design can do the design stuff. We pay insane amounts of money for professionals to do admin-style tasks, but the thought of hiring an admin assistant for them is simply out of the question.

amelius 4y ago

Imagine how productive he would be if he used a computer.

criddell 4y ago
Productivity matters for sure. I'd say it must be in the top 10 things professionals like Newey care about. It's certainly in the top 20 or at least the top 50.
egypturnash 4y ago
Computers are great, I'm sitting at a cafe working on my computer right now! If "looking at the comments on HN stories" counts as working. And every time my attention wanders from the applications where things that unambiguously count as working happen, it's got the entire Internet to get lost in. I've never been more productive!