The Racing Point car has only shown "glimpses" of its true potential
F1 News
- GPblog.com
The RP20, Racing Point's car for this season, is at times very fast, but often does not show its full potential. That became clear last weekend when Stroll didn't perform exceptionally well. What also didn't help were the technical problems with the Perez car, which prevented substitute Hulkenberg from starting. However, we haven't seen all of the car yet, because according to technical director Andy Green the RP20 only showed a glimpse of its true strength.
Third car on the grid
By standards, the car of Racing Point would be the third on the grid now that Ferrari has sagged, but that is not reflected in the points at the manufacturers. Andy Green at Motorsport.com says: "I'd say for lots of different reasons, we would admit that things haven't gone our way and we have made mistakes in the first few races."
"And we're underperforming [at Silverstone], but again, for something that I think is out of our control, with respect to losing a driver and having to change our weekend around", by which Green refers to the loss of Perez because of a corona infection. What's more, Racing Point has yet to discover the car.
"It's not something that you can really point the finger at. And just lots, lots of little things haven't quite gone our way. And we've seen glimpses of what the car's capable of doing, and we just understand that it is very difficult to keep it there at its peak. And we have to work incredibly hard to do that. I don't think we're the only ones who are going up and down."
Still a lot to learn
"We’re learning a lot every day. A new car concept runs in a completely different way than last year's car. And we only had a handful of days of running around in Barcelona back in February time, whenever it was, a cold Barcelona, to try and understand it. So we're still learning."
Team boss Szafnauer adds: "I think Andy Green is right, and sometimes it’s because of the circumstance." In other words, Racing Point is still a bit uncomfortable with the car they have this year and between the lines it sounds as if they don't know the car at all, which confirms once again that it is a direct copy of the Mercedes from 2019.