Racing Point to Defy F1 Rivals and Bring a Major Upgrade from Mercedes

Racing Point aren’t going to be deterred in the face of strong opposition from their rivals. Exploiting a loophole in the FIA’s rules, the Silverstone-based outfit are planning to go ahead and shift to the 2020 Mercedes suspension without using their two development tokens.

The FIA’s new pandemic enforced regulations don’t allow any major changes being made to the cars unless teams use their allotted tokens. These two development tokens can be used to upgrade ‘homologated parts’.

However, the aforementioned loophole was that teams like Racing Point, who outsource certain components from Mercedes, can upgrade to the latest variants of the said components without losing their tokens since the ‘homologated part’ was already registered by Mercedes in the previous year.

This possible exploitation of the loophole was criticized by many teams. Nevertheless, Racing Point’s Technical Director Andy Green believes that their original plan to upgrade their parts will run its course.

He said, “I think so, it’s happening. The rules allow us to do it. We’re going ahead and doing it, we’ve cleared it with the FIA. They have no problem with us doing it.

“The rules as written allow teams to bring their cars up to the 2020 specification, which I think is only fair.”

Racing Point top brass justifies the team’s decision

Green said, “Just because we elected to run 2019 suspension before COVID started shouldn’t be held against us. We should be allowed to bring our car up to the same specifications everyone else has got.

“To be clear, it’s an upgrade to a 2020 suspension. It’s not an upgrade to 2021. What we’re running now is 2019. So what they (rival teams) want us to do is penalize us and keep us running two-year-old parts, rather than bringing it up to date.

Moreover, he said, “It’s not like we’re getting an advantage and bringing ’21 parts of the car. It’s only bringing it up to the same as they’ve got now.”

With the improvements that Racing Point (Aston Martin) have shown this year,  the Silverstone-based team could be seen as a serious threat to the front runners in 2021.