AlphaTauri boss Franz Tost has challenged “F1 purists” by claiming the long-held definition of a constructor is now “out of date”.
This year has seen the debate on that topic explode thanks to Racing Point, who have come under close scrutiny for their so-called ‘Pink Mercedes’, which was created through a combination of buying in non-listed parts and photos, so they say.
The junior Red Bull team is another that has been gradually taking the same route, buying in parts from the senior team and increasing their technical co-operation.
And this approach is something Tost believes Formula 1 should be encouraging and opening up, rather than trying to crack down on.
“The personal opinion from my side is that teams should be able to buy much more from another team,” said the Austrian. “Why? Because for me this philosophy that every team must be a constructor is out of date.
“I know all the F1 purists say, ‘Ah, we must be a constructor. Every team must design everything in-house’. The question is, and you know the engineers are saying this, but how do you finance everything?
“Because we reached such a high level on the technical side, the top teams have such a fantastic infrastructure. If someone wants to come into F1 – even the teams which are in F1, if they want to catch up – this is very difficult and nearly impossible.
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“You spend millions and I’m just asking, what for? I’m asking, why does every team have to have its own wind tunnel, has to have its own CFD, has to have 500-600 employees? OK, now there is the cost cap coming, but nevertheless in my opinion we still spend too much money, especially now under these difficult economic circumstances.
“But the regulation is how it is. Personally I still think back to the days when we came to F1 with Toro Rosso and we just got a one-year-old car from Red Bull Technology, and we could race with a third of the money.”
In the wake of the Racing Point/Mercedes controversy, the FIA has declared it will not try to limit what each team can copy from another, but the AlphaTauri boss doesn’t see how.
“You cannot forbid that teams make photos from the other cars, this is also as old as F1 is itself,” he claimed.
“Now the question whether this is legal or whether this is not legal, whether you violate intellectual property rights or not.
“But this is not in my hands to decide. I think this is then the question the International Court of Appeal will have to answer.”
There is another point of contention that is also drawing the ire of the independent teams and manufacturers, as the FIA confirmed last week Racing Point, AlphaTauri and Haas will all get free upgrades on their non-listed parts from 2019 to 2020-spec next year without needing to spend any of their development tokens.
“We furthermore note that a number of teams have asked for the withdrawal of Article 22.8.5b of the 2021 technical regulations,” FIA secretary-general for motorsport Peter Bayer wrote in a letter to teams last week referring to the upgrades.
“The removal of this article at this stage would be unfair to the planning of the teams directly affected.
“While understanding the concerns of some in relation to this clause, we cannot support this request, unless of course there was unanimity among the 10 teams.”
It was as Sky Sports’ Martin Brundle noted though on this topic of team co-operation in his post-70th Anniversary GP column…
“This story will run a while because we have to sort out whether identical cars in ‘B teams’ are a viable and desirable way forward, and also if it’s correct to allow one team to copy in great detail another team’s car,” he wrote.
“It should be impossible to initially copy the wildly different brand new 2022 cars (it will definitely be embarrassing for somebody otherwise) but Racing Point can continue with this fast car through 2021 as they morph into Aston Martin.
“Teams who are Lone Ranger, like Renault, McLaren and Williams in particular, will be keen to break up this cosy relationship between Mercedes and Racing Point.
“Maybe the courts will have to decide but that could get smelly, if somewhat informative. And expensive.”