Dan Fallows, the new technical director of Aston Martin F1, explained to be an engineer like the others, and to have ideas at rather inauspicious moments. The Briton explains that it is often in the middle of the night that he has to test or write things down.
« Normally at three in the morning. It drives my wife crazy: I suddenly wake up in the middle of the night with an idea » Fallows said. « It’s strange, really strange. »
« It’s like your brain is doing all this work in the background while you’re sleeping. I love it so much that I try to leave work with a problem in mind thinking ‘well, this’ is gone’, and I let my brain get to work. »
« Sometimes it disappoints you, but every once in a while lightning strikes and you wake up thinking ‘oh yeah, I have to do this’. It’s so weird. Understanding how people work best and how they find ideas is actually very interesting, it’s different for everyone. »
Fallows explains that an engineer will need to take a step back from the problem if they want to solve it. Likewise, he specifies that this detail will be important for the development of the future factory.
« For me it’s the middle of the night for one reason or another, for others it’s when they go for a walk or run, but it’s almost never after fixing the same problem for ages. hours. »
« That’s why we’re looking into prioritizing open space in the new factory, because those things never occur to you when you’re sitting in front of a screen all the time. »
