Szafnauer: 'Racing Point is just better at copying than other teams'
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Racing Point remains the subject of discussion because the car would be too similar to the Mercedes of 2019. Renault has protested on two occasions, but Racing Point maintains that everything went according to the rules. Little by little it is becoming a story and it is waiting for an official statement from the FIA, which is currently investigating.
Financially possible at last
"We have always had a talented group of people who were unable to show their potential because of a lack of funds," says team boss Otmar Szafnauer to Auto, Motor und Sport. "We've wanted to take this step for a long time, but never had the funds to do it."
The situation is clearly different now with the financial injection of the investors led by Lawrence Stroll. "We're buying our gearbox from Mercedes. It has been specially designed for our development philosophy. We used to be limited in our design and we always wanted to get rid of those compromises. Now we are financially able to take this step for the first time."
Apart from that, the team is also a star in copying parts and that goes back a long way. "In 2009, we were the first team to copy the double diffuser from Brawn, Toyota and Williams - and even Red Bull. When McLaren came up with the 'F shaft' in 2010, we were the first to implement that trick after them."
We're better at copying
It is not permitted for all parts to immediately take over one on one, which has now been protested about. Racing Point however states that they are just very good at copying parts and that is allowed according to the rules. So once again Szafnauer remains very confident and doesn't worry about anything.
"We know the rules, we know what is allowed. We comply 100% with the rules. The FIA was at our factory in March and we were able to explain to them how we got this car. And they think it's 100 percent legal. Now all we have to do is explain the same thing to the race commissioners who weren't there at the time."
In the end, with a grin, the team boss says that Racing Point has simply done a better job than others, because each team copies working parts of each other. "We've done a better job of copying or integrating discoveries from photos in our cars," Szafnauer concludes.