F1 🏎 Racing Point / Mercedes

Should Mercedes also be reprimanded over the brake duct protest that Renault have won as well as Racing Point, who have a 400,000 euros fine and who have lost 15 championship points. Surely Mercedes were complicit in the design of the part.

I don’t think so unless there is some sort of complicity between the teams where it can be proved the RP will be helping Mercedes in someway. At the end of the day they just copied and got caught although there does seems to be some sort of grey area in the rules about listed parts. Am I right in the fact they can still carry on using the ‘illegal’ parts?

Interesting that was this done in the open but the Ferrari fiasco of last year was hidden away so we don’t know what they were up to and what their deal / reprimand was if any, they were just told to stop - One rule for one …

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Yes your right they can carry on using them for the rest of the 2020 season.

See Toto has said bring it on to the other teams, see you in court!

It’s a crazy situation, but F1 is nothing if not controversial :slight_smile:

The point here is that the ducts were not listed parts last year. This year they are. So Racing Point already had them. They fit to the upright (hub) which is not a listed part. So… design is heavily (entirely?) constrained by the design of the upright.
So what we’re Racing Point supposed to do? Stop using a part they already had tried and tested, design and develop something else that would be almost identical?
Seems crazy verdict from the ruling body, and yes it does stink of Ferrari favouritism. Nothing new there then.

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slightly off topic, but was watching some of the WTCC which kicked off the other day. Do you guys reckon F1 would be better or worse if all the cars were the same/much closer in ability?

It wouldn’t be F1 if the cars were the same, it would be yet another , made for TV and deeply tedious modern spec formula . The field in F1 is closer matched than at any time in its history , mainly because the stupidly prescriptive rules effectively require each team to make almost , but not quite the same car. That nonsense results in otherwise sane folk getting excited about a bloody brake duct .

F 1is not, never has been and never should be about wheel to wheel scraps throughout the field. If anybody wants that , do as I do and go and watch HSCC FF1600 and FF2000 races live from trackside. Kent or Pinto power , but lots of different chassis, even front and rear engine in 1600s Wonderful racing , despite , or perhaps because the cars are worth less than a Red Bull front wing

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