Mercedes doesn't want prying eyes: Aston Martin shown the door

Teams work together, sometimes even very intimately. It has been a hot topic lately, especially with AlphaTauri set to further tighten ties with Red Bull Racing. Zak Brown, the CEO of McLaren already expressed great concern about this alliance. But things can be different, as Mercedes and Aston Martin prove.

Aston Martin recently completed the creation of its own wind tunnel. Until then, the British team was using competitor Mercedes' wind tunnel. That is not to say that Aston Martin could secretly look into Mercedes' kitchen. In fact, the team could only access the wind tunnel through a door assigned by Mercedes.

'FIA pretty strict'

Aston Martin performance director Tom McCullough explains to the media - including GPblog - why it is important for the teams to work separately from each other. "The FIA are pretty strict and do a lot of inspections and all that stuff. Dominic Harlow [head of F1 technical audit for the governing body] comes and visits the teams. But for us with Mercedes, it is absolutely shut down to one, open to the other.

"Different access doors, different people running the sessions. So, I think from a confidentiality, obviously the relationship we have with Mercedes is very robust from that side. The FIA, that's their job to police all that," McCullough argues.