Racing Point has claimed a desire to copy Renault’s automatic brake bias system led to their protest after the Japanese Grand Prix.
This week, the French manufacturer was excluded from the results at Suzuka after the FIA ruled their system was legal by the technical regulations but fell foul of the sporting rules regarding driver aids.
On Friday, a disagreement then broke out over how Racing Point discovered the system, with Auto Motor und Sport pointing to an onboard video from testing which showed the brake bias adjusting without driver input.
However, Renault later refuted that by claiming a former employee had informed the Silverstone-based team, as had been noted in the FIA’s decision.
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As for what Racing Point’s intention was with the protest, however, CEO Otmar Szafnauer claimed it was merely to get clarification on the system’s legality.
“It really came about at Silverstone,” he told Sky Sports.
“We had our own problem with our brake bias system, the system failed. We had a mechanical failure on the switch and, if you remember, I think it was after a Safety Car, Sergio [Perez] went completely forward on his brake bias to keep his tyres warm and then couldn’t go back.
“The switch failed and ended up running into [Nico] Hulkenberg, so we started looking into what we could do to make that more robust.
“What we noticed was Renault especially had an automatic system which is what we wanted too really. We didn’t want to protest Renault, we just wanted to do the same,” Szafnauer insisted.
“We wrote to the FIA and they categorically said that we can’t do that. So we were hoping through the protest, the FIA would say ‘yes you too can do it’ but it didn’t work out that way.”
Renault, however, still remain baffled by the decision, with team boss Cyril Abiteboul revealing the system had been on the car for several years.
“We were absolutely convinced, as further demonstrated, that we were legal, and we were legal from a technical perspective,” he said via Crash.net.
“It’s a driver aid, but a number of things are driver aids. At some point, you need to accept that there’s an element of subjectivity. It’s been used for so many years that we never thought it could be put into question until what happened recently.
“The stewards have judged it that it’s not acceptable, so be it, I would prefer to put that behind us,” the Frenchman added.
“For me, it is harsh on the team. It’s also even harsher on drivers because it’s a very poor recognition of what they are doing.
“It is shedding a negative light on what they are doing, the way they are performing in the car. I can almost see people on some blogs thinking that the car is braking automatically, which is clearly not what is happening.”