Mclaren and Williams back down on appeal

Williams and Mclaren have both dropped their protests against the FIA’S ruling on the Racing Point brake-duct case.

Racing Point (right, above) was hit with a 15-point constructors’ championship penalty and a €400,000 fine after it was judged to have copied the design of Mercedes’ rear brake ducts for its 2020 car.

Four teams – Ferrari, Renault, Williams and Mclaren – all planned to appeal the ruling in pursuit of a harsher penalty, believing it unfair that the team could keep running the brake ducts for the remainder of the season. But both Williams and Mclaren have now pulled out of the case after fears over the future of independent designs were allayed by the FIA in the wake of the Racing Point ruling.

FIA head of single-seaters Nikolas Tombazis confirmed at Silverstone that plans were in place to outlaw copycat designs, and FIA secretary general for sport Peter Bayer expanded on this last week. Bayer told teams the updated rules would “expressly prevent teams from using photography or other reverse engineering techniques to copy large parts of other teams’ cars” from 2021.

“The most important thing for us was a clear commitment and agreement from FIA and F1 that they want to prohibit extensive copying in the future,” said Mclaren team principal Andreas Seidl (right, below). “We got this agreement with the announcement of Nikolas at Silverstone, and with further information we received on Tuesday. Now it’s important for us again to spend our energy on our own team.”

Both Ferrari and Renault will continue with their appeals, as will Racing Point in a bid to get its penalty overturned, which means it’s likely that the case will go to the FIA’S International Court of Appeal.

Questions over Mercedes’ links to Racing Point were met with a strong rebuttal from Toto Wolff, who vowed to respond to any serious allegations made against the team. It followed hints from Red Bull boss Christian Horner and Ferrari’s Mattia Binotto that Mercedes may have questions to answer over its involvement in the case.