James Qi: Sometimes you have to give the team the freedom

James Kee was appointed technical Director of Toro Rosso only six months ago, and he has to spend his first full season in new quality. On the day of presentation STR8 he told the press service of the team about what are the challenges facing engineers and designers Toro Rosso in the short term and in the future.
James Key: "I joined Toro Rosso in September 2012, and when you come into a new team, it's hard to say what's waiting for you - until you started with direct contact to the people. What I saw exceeded my expectations: it is difficult to assess whether increased team in recent years, how has increased its capabilities. For example, in Faenza has recently opened a new modern production facility for the manufacture of carboxylic components, which could be envied by many teams.
Features of the wind tunnel in Bicester (UK) and in General of the Department of aerodynamics has also been expanded, plus increased its effectiveness. Largely this was due to better interaction of this Department, which is based in the UK, and production sites in Italy.
Our Department computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is located in Faenza, and we try to ensure that all communications were fully debugged is also a priority. We have appointed several new leaders in the departments of aerodynamics and CFD in an effort to improve the whole process of modernization, and we can say that the approach to developing STR8 changed somewhat compared with the previous year.
In other areas, where the work was effectively established and went without much difficulty, until I began to change anything. Reliability last year's car was at the height, and one of our strengths is the highest attention to detail characteristic of our departments that are engaged in the development, research and quality control. On the road we also has an impressive team of specialists, and I can say that they do a good job with his work.
But, in my opinion, the departments, which directly depends on the speed of the machine until the cheat. Therefore, we must increase efficiency in areas such as aerodynamics, the behavior of the car on the track and computational simulation. So were substantial rearrangement and organized a new Department responsible for the behavior of the car on the track.
As far as I can judge by his previous experience, all teams solve the same task, but do it differently. In my opinion, the technical Director must use all strengths of the work of the team, and then go fix his weaknesses, not to change the whole team, forcing them to adapt to the usual approaches. But in the end he is responsible for the efficiency of the machine, so all its decisions, whatever they touch, affect the final product. I prefer a purely engineering approach, but sometimes you have to give the team the necessary freedom of action.
A radical change in the technical regulations, which will come into effect in 2014, is already reflected in our work, and so it will be throughout the year. All teams face a difficult task, regardless of their size, but a small team will feel it much stronger. We have to create a completely different machine, so use the usual ideology of design would be impossible. We must understand the new regulations and to fully apply this knowledge when designing machines for the 2014 year. Need to find a balance: on the one hand, it is necessary to achieve the best possible results this season, with another - to be well prepared for 2014, but that is the nature of Formula 1..."