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The technical teams were never truly separate (or independent) in the first place and were intergrated teams. At senior level there would be one technical head steering both design teams, like the head of aerodynamics for example. McLaren have always had one individual covering this role and so have Ferrari. Depending on deliverables, you can also have one design engineer covering either technical team or separate engineers and anyone who’s worked for a design consultancy before would confirm that it is not unusual to input into more than one project/design at any point. The Increasing reliability of simulator data means McLaren can now streamline their resources/manpower, but the point remains that they still effectively run a concurrent development strategy (to clarify). Both programmes will also be naturally staggered to avoid conflict so the point raised earlier in the thread about aborting work on the current car to allow them to focus on next year’s will bring very little benefits. Stopping work on this year's car does not automatically mean you free up resources as both cars are at different stages of the development process. In real terms, you’re just going to end up with someone sitting there with nothing to do and suddenly become inefficient.As a side note - they paid a heavy price in 2009 not only because of rule changes but also the over reliance on simulator data (something which Ron Dennis confirmed during the season). Rather than focusing on optimising components (a costly process of course as you can end up with several iterations and wastage) they designed towards limiting downforce values like pressure tapping velocities which they had calculated from the rules and technical details. When it went to test, it turned out the values were too low contrary to what the simulator told them, not to mention the calibration issues they subsequently had to rectify. The end result was a dog of a car.
The technical teams were never truly separate (or independent) in the first place and were intergrated teams. At senior level there would be one technical head steering both design teams, like the head of aerodynamics for example. McLaren have always had one individual covering this role and so have Ferrari. Depending on deliverables, you can also have one design engineer covering either technical team or separate engineers and anyone who’s worked for a design consultancy before would confirm that it is not unusual to input into more than one project/design at any point. The Increasing reliability of simulator data means McLaren can now streamline their resources/manpower, but the point remains that they still effectively run a concurrent development strategy (to clarify). Both programmes will also be naturally staggered to avoid conflict so the point raised earlier in the thread about aborting work on the current car to allow them to focus on next year’s will bring very little benefits. Stopping work on this year's car does not automatically mean you free up resources as both cars are at different stages of the development process. In real terms, you’re just going to end up with someone sitting there with nothing to do and suddenly become inefficient.
As a side note - they paid a heavy price in 2009 not only because of rule changes but also the over reliance on simulator data (something which Ron Dennis confirmed during the season). Rather than focusing on optimising components (a costly process of course as you can end up with several iterations and wastage) they designed towards limiting downforce values like pressure tapping velocities which they had calculated from the rules and technical details. When it went to test, it turned out the values were too low contrary to what the simulator told them, not to mention the calibration issues they subsequently had to rectify. The end result was a dog of a car.