Rival teams are complaining to the FIA about a loophole that will see teams like Racing Point and AlphaTauri get more upgrades in 2021.
As part of the measures introduced in response to the Covid-19 crisis, chassis, gearbox and suspension development is to be frozen with each team only getting two development tokens to work on other areas of the car they want to improve for next year.
However, this does not apply to teams who buy in non-listed parts, such as Racing Point from Mercedes, AlphaTauri from Red Bull and Haas from Ferrari.
As a result, they will benefit from buying in 2020-spec parts as opposed to the 2019-spec parts they used today.
And this has caught the attention of Renault, Ferrari and McLaren, all of whom have contacted the FIA and called for the loophole to be closed.
“We are not fully happy that there are teams that eventually can upgrade their entire package from a 2019 to a 2020 package,” Ferrari’s Mattia Binotto said.
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“That I believe would be unfair because the season with two tokens is similar for everybody. We’ve got only two tokens and everybody should be limited to that.”
For McLaren, the situation is worse as they have agreed to spend their tokens on making changes to accommodate their switch to Mercedes engines for 2021.
“We’re also not happy with that ruling because, for us, it simply is not logical,” team boss Andreas Seidl told Motorsport.com.
“If you compare it with our situation, we also had a contract in place for quite some time that we are doing the switch from the Renault power unit to the Mercedes power unit and we have to accept that, in the end, the two tokens each team has available will have to be used for that.
“We were happy to accept that compromise.
“If you compare that with, let’s say another team upgrading from a ’19 to a ’20 gearbox or suspension bits and being able to do that token free, it just doesn’t make sense.
“That’s something we’ll bring up again with some other teams to the FIA, but it’s simply down to the FIA to comment on this.”
Of course, some likely wouldn’t be so vocal if a certain ‘Pink Mercedes’ wasn’t so busy showing the rest of the midfield how it’s done in 2020.