Szafnauer: "Rivals have done wrong by not copying Mercedes"

According to Racing Point team boss Otmar Szafnauer, it's a missed opportunity for the other teams that they didn't copy last year's Mercedes. The team itself caused a lot of commotion at the beginning of 2020 by appearing on the grid with an almost exactly copied Mercedes W10.

Work with a lot of risk

"The answer is yes. However, it doesn't come without risk", replies Szafnauer at Motorsport.com, asking if other teams had their design philosophy wrong. "We didn't know that what we were doing was going to work. There was a big risk that we were going to take a step backwards."

"As a matter of fact, when we started developing this in the tunnel, with the ideas that we saw through pictures, we took a huge step backwards. I mean huge. It was seconds per lap slower in the beginning, and it was our own learning that we did for the development process of CFD and tunnel work, and more designs and redesigns, that got us to the place we did", Szafnauer continues.

Racing Point has wanted to change the rake of the car for a long time by buying the gearbox from Mercedes. "It's is designed with a low centre of gravity, so we always had compromises at the rear of the car, where the downforce is critical to have a stable rear end."

Red Bull concept did not work for Racing Point

According to Szafnauer, copying other teams is quite normal. The team also claims to have taken pictures of the floor of Red Bull Racing, but that concept turned out not to work at the time. "I can tell you, other teams have done the same. Everybody does it, it's allowed", Szafnauer concludes about copying.