Renault protested this year’s Racing Point to the stewards at the Styrian, Hungarian
and British Grands Prix and thse protests were upheld by the stewards, meaning they
agreed with Renault’s argument that the Racing Point was [look at paper] ‘‘well
dodgy’ Racing Point were given a 15 point deduction
from their constructor’s haul (leaving the drivers points untouched) and handed a 400
thousand euro fine. So what did RP do wrong? How did the stewards
come to their decision? And what are the consequences? Let’s walk through the timeline.
Firstly, Racing Point already have a well established relationship with Mercedes - including
buying parts from them As the rules stand, some of the parts of a
car CAN be purchased or shared from other teams and this is mainly in the interests
of cost saving. But there are still many, many parts of the
car that MUST be designed and created by the team itself and these are known as the Listed
Parts. Racing Point rocked up to testing with a look
so similar to the 2019 Mercedes that is was clear Racing Point had copied Mercedes, giving
the RP20 the nickname, the ‘Tracing Point’. Ultimately, Renault decided to protest at
the Styrian, Hungarian and British grands prix, the Racing Point’s brake ducts.
These protests were deemed valid by the stewards who prompted snagged both the Racing Points
2020 brake ducts and the Merc’s 2019 brake ducts and began their investigation.
Why the brake ducts, then, when the whole car looks so similar to the Merc?
Well, it’s perfectly legal to use hundreds of photos and videos of a rival’s car to
try and reverse engineer their ideas into your own design.
In fact, this had been going on for decades - innovation breeds copycats. We’ve all
seen that, though not on such a massive scale, normally.
The brake ducts though - most of the key parts are inside and impossible to spot from external
photographs. It’s much clearer to prove a design is NOT a team’s own if the unseen
parts are near-identical. Crucially - and to add some complication - brake
ducts were NOT classified as listed parts before 2020 but they became listed parts from
the start of the year. Though, teams did know this was coming from when the sporting regulations
were published in April 2019. So, Racing Point did legally have in their
possession Mercedes’ 2019 brake ducts and their designs and were using them legally
in 2019. Brake ducts were changed to listed parts,
and therefore had to be designed by your own team, for 2020 as it was noted that brake
ducts had “important aerodynamic effect” an the FIA wanted to make sure “components
which had important influence aerodynamically could not be provided to another team”.
Which makes absolute sense to me. So Racing Point have always acknowledged they’ve
aimed to copy Mercedes’ design philosophy as much as possible this year, which is allowed.
But they did find themselves in a strange grey area. In 2019 they had in their legal
possession the Merc 2019 brake ducts and their designs. So how do you erase this knowledge
from your brain when setting out to design your 2020 car?
Well, the stewards have acknowledged this complicated situation and that the change
in brake ducts from non-listed to listed part status created a unique set of circumstances,
but they do explain exactly where Racing Point went wrong.
And the story is different with the Front Brake Ducts from the Rears.
Let’s start at the front. Here, Racing Point were already using Merc’s
brake ducts on their 2019 car. As brake ducts are an aerodynamic part, they had to be incorporated
to compliment the rest of the car. As we know, the aerodynamic flow down the body of the
car is a complicated interaction of many surfaces and components.
So when Racing Point started developing their RP20 car back in 2019, they used the RP19
(with the merc front brake ducts) as a starting point and then evolved it from there.
The stewards clarify that IF Racing Point had asked the FIA how to go about this legally,
the FIA would have helped as the brake ducts were baked into the DNA of the 2019 car’s
design and as such would have been brought forward into the 2020 car.
Basically it would be unfair to expect Racing Point to scrap a key part of their car and
start from scratch, stopping them from doing a normal car evolution due to a new regulation
coming in. This itself was a point of ambiguity in the
regulation change and if this were the ONLY point of contention, Racing Point might have
got away with it. But, at the rear, it was a different story.
So, for reasons likely to do with the existing structure of the RP19, Racing Point did NOT
use Merc’s REAR brake ducts in last year’s car. Instead, it saved them for the RP20.
The difference here is they could not argue that it was simply evolving and existing,
legal car design forward into the 2020 model. Instead, they were directly feeding a rival’s
rear brake duct design into their 2020 car, which was not allowed.
The stewards state that IF Racing Point had asked the FIA if this was cool, the FIA would
have said ‘absolutely not’ and told them to make their own brake ducts.
So - now a couple of clarifications. This is a breach of the sporting regulations,
not the technical regulations. “Don’t copy someone else” is a rule
on sporting behaviour, in much the same way as “don’t drive into someone else” is.
It is an ACT that can be judged, penalised, and moved on from.
According to the TECHNICAL regulations, the car still completely legal as all the parts
are the required dimensions/weights etc as demanded by the FIA so the team can still
use the parts. The stewards are annoyed that Racing Point
didn’t clarify with FIA whether what they were doing was OK back when they were in the
design stage. This is a very normal and expected practice when exploring a grey area in the
regulations and would have saved everyone a lot of time and effort.
However, they also acknowledge there was little guidance from the FIA when these rules were
introduced and a gaping big grey area for Racing Point to fall into. Furthermore, they
are happy Racing Point has been open and transparent throughout the investigations and had no intention
of breaking the rules. So Racing Point got issues a points deduction
and fine which - and this is going to be a contentious point for many - the stewards
have deemed as a fair penalty to balance the advantage Racing Point may have in the brake
duct design process. Racing Point are now allowed to continue using
their brake ducts as they are still technically a legal component.
Some people are worried about the precedent this sets and whether, say, Alpha Tauri can
bolt on Red Bull’s brake ducts and accept the fine and points cut for the potential
performance advantage. And this is very unlikely as the stewards
have now clarified grey areas and part of Racing Point’s leeway was to do with the
fact that there was a lack of clarity. Anyone attempting the same trick now will have no
such excuse of ignorance. The FIA’s head of single seaters, Nikolas
Tombazis, says they intend to amend the 2021 regulations to clamp down on teams studying
rivals’ cars through photograph and copying them which… good luck with that.
I’ll be astonished if the FIA can find a clear way to regulate such a nebulous concept
of ‘looking at another car and copying it’ and how to determine if two cars seem ‘too
alike’. Anyway, what do you think of this? Do you
think the stewards came to the right conclusions on balance? This is a complicated situation
but I completely understand how they came to their decision. It still feels a bit of
a slap on the wrist, but I.. I’m not sure what I would have done differently.
I’ll link to the full stewards conclusions document in the description if you like that
kind of thing.