Who stands where in the battle for the soul of Formula 1
Formula 1 teams have been cherry-picking their rivals’ best ideas throughout the history of the world championship. But sharing or copying complete cars has proved to be a step too far…
These are the words of Sir Frank Williams – in 2007. Thirteen years ago Formula 1 was in the grip of an identity crisis thanks to the audacity of a carbonated drinks company fielding four broadly identical cars, and Williams was prepared to go to court to preserve the status quo.
Since then an argument has been simmering – sometimes gently, often threatening to boil over – about a philosophical question that cuts to the very essence of what it means to be a competitor in Formula 1. It’s not a debate about speed or performance, what fuels should be used, how big the engines should be, though all these matters and more have been thrown in to muddy the waters. It’s simpler and yet, at the same time, far more complex: it’s a question of identity, of authorship.
Simply put – what does it mean to be a ‘constructor’? Should F1 continue to honour its heritage as the pinnacle of technology in motorsport, of individual craftsmanship and design, a world where the ‘brand’ is not simply the iconography by the factory gate but a fundamental statement, a set of values, an integral part of a championship now completing its 70th year? Or should it, for the sake of financial expediency and administrative convenience, gradually become an identikit category where teams are little more than franchisees, buying in components from a menu as if choosing a fantasy football team?
“We are what you might call a traditionalist racing team which believes that we are out there competing for two world championships, one for the best driver in the world and one for the constructor who builds the best car in the world. As far as I’m concerned it is absolutely in the regulations, in black and white, that every team must make its own chassis.”
For the fans, those with a long emotional investment in F1, and probably with particular attachments to one or more of the teams within it, there’s surely no question at all. The car is the on-track personification of the team: its quality and ingenuity, its quirks and its failings, are part of the tapestry of F1’s ongoing narrative. Teams have stolen ideas from one another through history, yes, but the tech is part of the intrigue. An F1 car shouldn’t just be an off-the-shelf carbonfibre tub with a bespoke paint job…
But this is Formula 1, where vast sums of money are now at play, fortunes can be made and lost, and big-picture decisions are shaped by politics and expediency rather than emotion.
HOW RACING POINT REIGNITED AN OLD ARGUMENT
Racing Point’s bold but controversial decision to ‘clone’ last year’s championship-winning Mercedes W10 brought the idea of intellectual property to the fore – and reopened many old wounds – at a crucial time in F1, just as the stakeholders were in the final throes of negotiating the next Concorde Agreement.
Inevitably the issue became a sticking point just as the commercial rights holder was trying to maintain the value of its property by tying in the competitors for another five years. For while fans might cherish the emotional attachment they have to particular teams, if you’re running a multi-million-pound business you have to look through different optics.
Racing Point’s occasionally patchy on-track performance this season has proved that while copying a winning car is one thing, winning with it is quite another. On pure pace, though, the RP20 car is well clear of its former midfield rivals on many circuits.
Clear, too, of Ferrari and even, sometimes, of Red Bull. There’s no doubt the team has achieved the performance uplift it was looking for, even if it often falls short of unlocking that potential. And it’s doing this while still operating on a much lower budget, and with fewer staff, than any other team bar Haas.
For all the high-minded rhetoric about copying (and the off-the-record briefings alleging that the relationship between Mercedes and Racing Point is cosier than permitted), it’s this which has infuriated rivals most. This and the unanticipated free gift from COVID-19: a design freeze which means this year’s cars will carry through almost unchanged to the end of next season. For Racing Point that means a baked-in advantage, for others a disadvantage.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Despite many attempts to change the direction of travel in the past two decades, F1 is an expensive business to be involved in. Design and build of the cars represents a huge fixed capital cost, and this is why design and intellectual property remains a contentious issue. To shortcut that investment, particularly that which would flow into R&D and innovation, is to undermine the business models of many of the participants.
It’s for this reason that for many years the principle of authorship, of each constructor having to design its own cars, was enshrined not in F1’s technical regulations but in the wording of the Concorde Agreement, the confidential commercial contract which binds the participants, governing body and commercial rights holder.
Until the 1980s Formula 1 grids were more diverse and there was nothing to stop a private team buying, say, a March or a second-hand Mclaren or Williams (Mclaren started out building customer cars to subsidise its racing efforts). As Bernie Ecclestone moved in on the TV rights and secured global TV deals, grids became more uniform and entrants were contractually obliged to attend every round – and build their own cars – for the sake of the spectacle.
Having the status of constructor defined within F1’s binding commercial contract
“TEAMS HAVE STOLEN IDEAS FROM ONE ANOTHER THROUGH HISTORY, YES, BUT THE TECH IS PART OF THE INTRIGUE. AN F1 CAR SHOULDN’T JUST BE AN OFF-THE-SHELF CARBONFIBRE TUB WITH
A BESPOKE PAINT JOB…”
“NOBODY HAD EXPECTED A NEW TEAM [HAAS] TO SHOW UP WITH THAT MUCH MANUFACTURER IP ATTACHED TO ITS CAR. THE CONTROVERSY NATURALLY INTENSIFIED WHEN THAT CAR PROVED COMPETITIVE “
protected each entrant’s investment, just as the share of the prize money codified the returns on those investments. As cars became more complex to design and build, they also became vastly more expensive.
When Red Bull entered F1 in 2005, buying two teams, its vision was for them to enter fundamentally the same cars. Rivals pushed back against this, and succeeded when the FIA adopted the definition of a constructor in its sporting regulations in 2010. Appendix 6 of the new rulebook laid out so-called ‘listed parts’ of the cars, from the survival cell to the impact structures, aerodynamic surfaces and suspension components, which had to be bespoke designs by each constructor.
That ought to have laid the matter to rest for good, but the lingering effects of global recession, combined with ongoing power plays between F1’s stakeholders, meant these hard-and-fast rules were soon diluted.
THE LEGACY OF DIVIDE-AND-RULE
An influx of big-spending manufacturers during the early 2000s cushioned the effects of bans on tobacco advertising, so F1 never weaned itself off its spending habit. Worse – if you were Ecclestone or his chum, FIA president Max Mosley – these manufacturers were uppity, demanding a greater voice in the running of F1. The recession of 2008 chased many of them out, but now the teams banded together to argue for a better deal.
Throughout the decade Mosley had pushed through cost-cutting ideas which weren’t universally popular. In response to the financial crisis he proposed a budget cap which would enable new teams to enter in 2010, taking advantage of a low-cost common powertrain supplied by Cosworth and Hewland.
None of those new teams exist today because Mosley was out of office by the time they turned wheels, abandoned by Ecclestone as Bernie desperately sought to make a new Concorde Agreement with the existing entrants. They had no interest in budget caps, were furious about the potential dilution of prize money, and they wanted Mosley’s head on a plate. Ecclestone served it up to them presently and then set about destroying their unity.
That Concorde Agreement, which expires this year, was a tapestry of bipartite deals Ecclestone cut with individual teams, giving the bigger ones what they wanted – a bigger share of the prizes and a seat at the rule-making table. Red Bull was the first to sign up with Ecclestone and quit the teams’ union, followed by Ferrari.
F1 has been living with the consequences of this ever since. Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes and Mclaren were handed sweeteners in the form of the annual “constructors’ championship bonus”, and Mclaren and Williams receive ‘heritage’ bonuses on account of their longevity. Ferrari gets an even bigger one. Those teams outside this exclusive club therefore took a much smaller proportion of the prize fund than before.
Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, Mclaren and Williams, together with the highest-finishing team outside that clan, also gained votes in the newly formed Strategy Group, which was given sole responsibility for proposing rule changes and new ideas. Politics between those teams, the FIA and Ecclestone ensured this body remained dysfunctional throughout its existence. Those teams without voting rights – one of which, for a long time, was Force India, now known as Racing Point – had no say in how F1 was run.
Over the course of the past decade the Strategy Group has diluted the listed parts regulations for a number of reasons. There was pressure from the FIA and the commercial rights holder to lower the financial barriers to entry; the manufacturer teams saw an opportunity to open up revenue streams by selling designs and whole components to teams further down the food chain, and to extend their political influence. So long as the ‘unlisted’ parts were relatively generic, and conferred no performance advantage, where was the harm? And if the customer felt bound to be politically aligned with its supplier, so much the better.
The shock came in 2016, when Haas entered F1 with a car which featured not only a complete Ferrari powertrain, but also as many other Ferrari components as Haas could legally obtain under the listed parts rules. Here was the unintended consequence of the list’s dilution. Nobody had expected a new team to show up with that much manufacturer IP attached to its car. The controversy naturally intensified when that car proved competitive.
As successive Haas cars arrived bearing strong aeodynamic similarities to the equivalent Ferraris, momentum built to tighten the list once more. Brake ducts, once considered fair game for a customer supply, were now identified as performance differentiators because of their aerodynamic influence. This is what caught out Racing Point; it had previously bought its suspension and brake assemblies from Mercedes, but only used the designs for the front end because it was following a different aerodynamic philosophy. When it copied the Mercedes W10, adopting that car’s low-rake aero map, Racing Point based its rear brake designs on those previously obtained from Mercedes – and which were now on the list of designs which had to be bespoke.
PEACE IN OUR TIME?
Racing Point avoided a tougher sanction because the FIA’S own technical department had failed to spot the issue when examining the car in February, and because it conceded that the wording of the rules was too vague. Other teams – Renault, which had filed the initial protests against Racing Point, along with Ferrari, Mclaren and Williams – thought the punishment toothless and said they would appeal it.
They have all now withdrawn or declined to lodge those appeals. Why? Quietly and behind the scenes, in order to expedite the signing of the new Concorde Agreement, for which the deadline was rapidly approaching. F1 and the FIA moved to settle the argument with as much mutual satisfaction as could be obtained.
It required compromise on all sides. F1 managing director of motorsports Ross Brawn has been a vocal supporter of the Haas model because it lowers the financial barrier to entry. More than anything else, F1 needs to attract and retain a healthy field of competitors. It also wants to level that playing field, which is why the new financial settlement is more equitable and a new governance structure will replace the much-loathed Strategy Group. The FIA has committed to changing the rules – to outlaw wholesale copying or reverse engineering, whether that is done from photographs or by underhand co-operation between teams.
Renault said it lodged its protest because it saw this issue as vitally important for the future of F1. It also wanted to protect its ongoing investment in new design and manufacturing facilities at its UK base near Enstone.
Williams remains a fiercely independent team for all its recent political alignment with Mercedes, and a staunch believer in designing and building as much of its own car as possible. Since it was in grave financial trouble and up for sale, it needed assurances that its business model wouldn’t be rendered defunct by any further shifts in favour of customer cars. Some may find this a bit rich since the first constructors’ trophy in the Williams cabinet was delivered by a car which was a clever copy of the Lotus 79…
Mclaren, too, had been highly critical of Racing Point, and CEO Zak Brown publicly described the claim that the RP20 was designed solely via photography as “BS”. The team – which, like Williams, has also required outside investment to continue this season – has now parked its complaints. Essentially, all parties involved in this case had compelling reasons not to go to court.
So, it’s a win all round – for now. A grey area will surely exist in the new regulations surrounding copying, and then it will be up to someone to answer a vital question: how much is too much?