Ferrari to redesign their 2009 F1 car @ 20 million euros? | FerrariChat

Ferrari to redesign their 2009 F1 car @ 20 million euros?

Discussion in 'F1' started by aquapuss, Apr 1, 2009.

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  1. aquapuss

    aquapuss Formula 3

    Sep 18, 2005
    1,256
    According to German TZ magazine. The Ferrari employee quoted said that a redesign is necessary to incorporate a diffuser similar to the Brawn one. The car should be ready on May 10 for the Spanish GP.

    Did not find the original article yet but this is from Finnish MTV3 site that is mainly a news site and not gossip.

    http://www.mtv3.fi/urheilu/f1/uutiset.shtml/arkistot/f1/2009/04/849813
     
  2. SrfCity

    SrfCity F1 World Champ

    $20MM? All the work is done in house. A little OT but that's it.
     
  3. 62 250 GTO

    62 250 GTO F1 Veteran

    Jan 9, 2004
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    20 million Euros? No way. That would make the cost of developing a car for each year reach the billions. I also doubt it will take that long for the {former} top three teams to incorporate the new specs.
     
  4. senna21

    senna21 F1 Rookie

    Jul 2, 2004
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    It certainly is possible. Take a look at the salaries of the individuals and add that in. Then take the amount of time spent in the wind tunnel(s) and calculate out what that cost you per hour. Then are the guys running the tunnels hourly or salary? If hourly, any hourly workers involved really, calculate in their pay and I'm sure there's LOTS of overtime involved. Then the guys in the mold shop. Are they hourly? Union? Get extra compensation for their overtime? Add that in. Also bill in the cost of the molds. Does the rear gearbox need to be redesigned? I believe it does as it makes the top part of the diffuser. So add in the salaries, hourly wages, overtime for that design department as well. Then also the cost of manufacturing the thing. Also the cost of manufacturing the diffuser and new body parts. Salary, hourly wages, overtime for the laminators, autoclave technicians. Oh, I forgot the guys running the computer simulations before it even goes into the wind tunnel. You know the drill, add it all up. Then you've also got the smaller costs, like buying the guys dinner that are burning the midnight oil and stuff like that.

    Any business can burn through cash if it's not careful. It doesn't take much for the costs to creep up if you're not careful. Yea, that's a lot of money but there are a lot of highly paid individuals involved in designing something like this. That’s where the real cost come from.
     
  5. barbazza

    barbazza Formula 3
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    Alonso would seem to agree with you. He makes the point that it isn't just a diffuser redesign that's needed. It's practically the whole car. Very expensive!

    http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/74118
     
  6. SRT Mike

    SRT Mike Two Time F1 World Champ

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    Exactly.

    This is the reason for the angst amongst the teams... it's not just the diffuser that bolts on, it's basically the whole bottom chassis that needs remade.

    I am familiar with how those parts are made, and it is VERY expensive and time consuming.
     
  7. rmani

    rmani F1 Veteran
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    no doubt mclaren will be doing this also very soon
     
  8. smart_alek

    smart_alek Formula Junior

    Jun 12, 2005
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    Didn't the Scuderia spend upwards of 20 million dollars to test and add parts to the ferrari for the final race, only to have Schumi stall at the grid while Mika ran away? It's certainly possible.
     
  9. VIZSLA

    VIZSLA Four Time F1 World Champ
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    IMO the 20 mil is an inflated figure designed to sway the powers that be in the FIA when they (re)consider the diffuser issue.
    It will mean a major redesign to incorporate the new diffuser but won't cost that much.
     
  10. Fast_ian

    Fast_ian Two Time F1 World Champ

    Sep 25, 2006
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    And, if that's true, as I mentioned elsewhere it could open up the "new crash test required" scenario - And that's not cheap.....

    Cheers,
    Ian
     
  11. kraftwerk

    kraftwerk Two Time F1 World Champ

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    Not to blow my trumpet but:
    But I got in a conflab! with some that's appears to know better...:rolleyes:
     
  12. aquapuss

    aquapuss Formula 3

    Sep 18, 2005
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    Both Keke and JJ opined during the GP broadcast that incorporating a diffuser will require a substantial redesign of the car. They should know something about the topic, Keke being an educated automotive engineer IIRC.
     
  13. LMPDesigner

    LMPDesigner F1 Rookie
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    Nov 5, 2003
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    Doesn't anybody do a little simple math before spreading stuff like this?

    April 1st to May 10 is 40 days.

    20 million euro is about 26 million US$


    SO FIGURE IT OUT--26 million/40 days is $650,000 per day, every day. That is $27,000 per hour 24 hours a day.

    Now I have worked for the F1 boys in my past as a designer--and I can assure you we never spent anything like the numbers you are talking about.

    The cost to redo the car to "match" the diffuser design on the Brawn will be in the order of a million dollars-maybe-at the way outside! The talk about redoing the whole car is wrong. Think about it-if the car is going to be redesigned, patterns made, tooling made, parts made, car assembly and tested in 40 days we are not talking about "a whole new bottom to the car or a new redesign". No way. You don't have the time.

    Look at time line:

    1 week to design new diffuser concept and parts.

    1 week to make tunnel parts and test parts.

    Assuming parts work another week to make patterns and tooling. (You could gain some time by making full scale pattern work while doing tunnel testing-but risky)

    1 week to make parts and assemble.

    2-3 days for fit and track testing

    So about 1 month response time for a new diffuser.

    You can't do a new gearbox design and casting in one month-not going to happen.

    So basically bodywork stuff.

    So a rear diffuser is about $25 to 40K per part
    Center floor will stay as is (rules)
    Engine cover is about $10-15K
    Engine Side covers are about $4 k
    So what--say at most $70K in parts-then tooling and patterns-Worst case double it. So $150K

    Now tunnel bits and testing. One week testing 20 hours a day at $2500/hour is $350,000 -which is way high-but leave it.

    Engineering: 1 week for 10 guys at $100/hour overhead rates is about $60k

    Add in another $100k for misc crap and you have at worst case maybe $700k--and I am sure you could do it well for half that.
     
  14. SRT Mike

    SRT Mike Two Time F1 World Champ

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    I dunno...

    I read an article once about how the CF bodies are made. They start with a gigantic hunk of metal and machine it on a 5-axis CNC machine. They use this as a mold for the actual body parts.

    Most shops charge those machines out at a few hundred an hour (or sometimes a lot more), times a few hundred hours of machining for each F1 body mold. Plus buying giant hunks of expensive metal, and I'm sure mid-season everything is getting overnighted here and overnighted there. It adds up, a few hundred grand here, few hundred grand there. I have no idea how many molds there are that make up the total number of parts that would need replaced, but it could be 3-4 molds, maybe 10 molds, and the costs could easily be in the multiple millions just for that. Add in design time, testing, recertification (new crash test would be required by the FIA), production, the costs to change them on the actual cars (i.e. maybe the cars need to get shipped back on charter flights to home base and back again im time to go to the next race).

    I can see a $20mm figure being reasonable. I certainly don't think it's total pie in the sky... I'm sure they add in every little thing they can (sort of like when someone puts together a list for their insurance claim for damages after a roof collapse) but I am not sure it isn't based in reality.

    I think the FIA will just make them legal for everyone though, so despite the whining, the teams are gonna have to suck it up and remake parts of the car.
     
  15. Alex1015

    Alex1015 Formula Junior

    Sep 1, 2005
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    Off base, exaggerated journalism sells better than facts to the general public.
     
  16. Tokyo Drftr

    Tokyo Drftr Formula 3

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    who was it that said.........don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.........
     
  17. racerx3317

    racerx3317 F1 Veteran

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    Wait a second though, if they were to re-design the car how would they test it? Isn't there a ban on testing? Wouldn't that be a bit dangerous to run a basically new car without testing it to see if it's actually better?
     
  18. Alex1015

    Alex1015 Formula Junior

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    Obviously there is no substitute for pure empirical data but given the situation it may be a risk worth taking.

    You'd be amazed by how advanced some of the computer simulations can be.
     
  19. PhilNotHill

    PhilNotHill Two Time F1 World Champ
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    I'm a diffuser
    I'm not what I appear to be.
    I'm a diffuser...
     
  20. racerx3317

    racerx3317 F1 Veteran

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    That's true. I saw the Acura documentary on Speed and David Brabham said that simulator used by Wirth engineering was really accurate. Apparently the whole car was designed and tested in the simulator before it was actually built. That said it is a bit of a risk without real world testing.
     
  21. Sempre_gilles

    Sempre_gilles Formula 3

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    #21 Sempre_gilles, Apr 2, 2009
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2009
    Suppose that the quoted amount of $20 million is true. Isn't it ironic then that a single inadequate defined rule forces several teams to spend these kind of amounts to adapt while most of the the rule changes were meant to REDUCE costs in the first place?
     
  22. LongJohnSilver

    LongJohnSilver Formula Junior

    Apr 15, 2006
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    LMPDesigner, I dont mean to discount your opinion, as you always seem to know your stuff, but I dont see the figure as being that high.
    Look at say the budget of a major team for the year. Say $400 million (Ive heard that Toyota's budget was as high as $600 mil). Over 365 days that is just over a million dollars a day. Granted this is the whole teams budget, but it is still on the same order of magnitude.

    The 40 day figure is also not 100% accurate. The teams have known about the other team's diffusers for some time now. It was at least a few weeks before the season that the issue hit the media. I would bet that the teams started work on it from the moment they found out they were behind. That pushes the time period to 65 to 70 days.

    I believe the real sticking point is the gearbox housing. The larger diffuser needs a lot more space and lots of that comes from a differently designed gearbox housing. A redesign of this area would certainly cost an amount near this. The housing is load bearing and the suspension is partially mounted to it, correct? Would certainly be a costly redesign. You may be right that it just wouldn't be possible in even a few months though.
     
  23. anguruso

    anguruso Formula Junior

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    This is shows that cost reductions aren't going to work, only a budget cap can reduce F1 spending. If teams are forced to spend less money in one area, i.e. testing, they'll just get that money and spend it in another area.
     
  24. VIZSLA

    VIZSLA Four Time F1 World Champ
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    McL has best simulator going. Fat lot of good it did them.
    VIA will have to modify test ban.
     

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