Red Bull boss Christian Horner has defended the increasing trend of smaller teams “cloning” the car design of their bigger partners.
The debate, first sparked by Haas buying in parts from Ferrari in 2016, is back on the agenda after Racing Point revealed a 2020 car which appears almost identical to last year’s Mercedes during pre-season testing last week.
That immediately led to calls of hypocrisy from the American team, who noted how Racing Point had been one of those most critical of their approach only a few years earlier, and also put tails up at fully independent rivals like McLaren.
“I think collaborations do make sense because otherwise teams like AlphaTauri and Racing Point, Haas and even Sauber [Alfa Romeo], if they couldn’t buy suspension and gearboxes, that’s all R&D that they’re going to have to conduct themselves with big amounts of resource,” Horner said via The Race last week.
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“Of course, some teams look like they’ve gone further in their cloning than others, but so long as it complies with the rules I don’t particularly have a problem with it.
“For Liberty, it creates a more competitive grid and for the teams, it makes Formula 1 more affordable.
“Of course, you don’t want 10 cars that all look the same,” the Red Bull boss acknowledged, “but I think there are elements of the car that is transferable like suspension and gearboxes, for example, that make a lot of sense.”
It should be noted that there is no suggestion Racing Point has broken any regulations by seemingly mimicking the Mercedes design concept with its car.
But McLaren boss Andreas Seidl does question if ‘cloning’ could have another benefit which the FIA might not be following.
“To be honest, I think the rules are pretty clear of what is allowed and what is not allowed and of course it’s important already now in ’20, that these rules are followed,” he said.
“But there’s limitations for each team on what you’re allowed to do for example on the CFD side or in terms of wind tunnel hours.
“I assume that it’s already properly policed now, that not one team, for example, is doing work, which then gets transferred to another team because it would clearly not be within the regulations.”
Racing Point has also been quick to defend their decision with CEO Otmar Szafnauer admitting it is something the team has wanted to do for a while.
“It doesn’t bother me. We’ve been talking about doing this for a long time,” he told Formula1.com of the criticism.
“We’ve had the Mercedes gearbox in the back of our car for many years, and because they run a different aero concept to us, because we ran a high rake with a gearbox that was designed for not a high rake, we were always compromised, especially at the rear end aerodynamically.
“That meant we had rear instability and because of where we are financially now it was the first opportunity we’ve had to actually switch concepts because it takes quite a bit of effort and resource to do that.
“This was our opportunity to do it – the sad thing is we will have a year of it, and then the regulations change.”