Abiteboul's worried about Racing Point: ''I've never seen this before''
F1 News
- GPblog.com
The coronavirus holds the whole world in its grip and Formula 1 cannot escape it. Yet some folks are focussed on other things, as Cyril Abiteboul once again discusses the new Racing Point car which looks very similar to last years Mercedes.
The pink Mercedes
It has been a while, but when Racing Point appeared on the track during the winter tests in Barcelona, a lot of teams raised their eyebrods. A lot of people wondered of it's just the Mercedes of 2019, and indeed, that car looked a lot like the Mercedes which made Lewis Hamilton a six time world champion.
Rumours soon spread and so the team decided to go outside. Of course they hadn't talked to Mercedes and hadn't copied it literally, but why developed a new car yourself when you can also look at the best car, Andrew Green said during the winter testing. So it did copy the car from Mercedes, but with its own designs.
Renault keeps an eye on it
''At least they'll have great photographers if they can do that,'' said Abiteboul cynical to the French station Canal+. ''I've never experienced this in F1, that a team is just proud to say that it has copied something. It has no value at all if you copy it, so how can you be proud of that'', asks the team boss of Renault.
Abiteboul does not rule out a case against the team. ''The most important thing to investigate is whether they made this design based on the public information, or whether they obtained that information. We do have big questions about that'', is the Frenchman's answer.