Silicon Valley Nation: Five engineering lessons from race teams

9/13/2012 5:07 PM EDT

• Listen to the ecosystem: Some engineers work in leading-edge applications (racing, aerospace, consumer). But it's important to remember that no matter how sophisticated your technology, there's something more sophisticated somewhere else that may be relevant to your design today or trickle down (in cost) to you tomorrow. That's what we learned chatting with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing chief engineer Jay O'Connell. 
• Facing barriers, don't give up: O'Connell's team, racing BMW cars, is so good the American LeMans series leadership penalized them 5 percent during the 2011 season to give other teams a fighting chance. The Rahal Letterman team still won the season.  
• Keep it simple: Often, the best solution is the simplest. Mechanical engineering Mike Held working with KV Racing recalled how he helped build a simple solution for racing legend Rick Mears. 
• Think different: The best engineers pay attention to changing standards and regulations and leverage them faster than competitors who may be tradition- or hide-bound.  Mechanical engineer Mario Illien, a legend in racing circles, regaled us with a tale of how he and Roger Penske teamed to shock speed freaks in the early 1990s.  
• Get very close to your customer: Racing engineers, obviously, are almost literally attached at the hip to their driver-customer. That enables relentless learning and constant refinement, as we learned from Arie Luyendyk. It's easy to forget or to underestimate that feedback loop in engineering disciplines where the engineer-customer bond is looser.