Remarkable: Racing Point voted for rule which now declares RP20 illegal

From 2020 the brake ducts will be defined as a 'listed part' in Formula 1 and that means that all teams will have to develop this part themselves and will no longer be able to simply buy it from other teams. Racing Point has been penalized for this in 2020, but remarkably the team itself has voted for the introduction of this new rule.

That's what Otmar Szafnauer tells on Thursday in conversation with Racefans.net and others. "I, for one, voted for this rule to take place. We had a vote to change this and Cyril (Abiteboul) was going around lobbying people because not everybody wanted the change from a non-listed into a listed part. And you can imagine those who didn’t want this to happen," said Szafnauer without naming names. So it came through in the end.

According to the Romanian-born, a meeting of the Strategy Group discussed the why and the reasons behind it. "And we were 100% certain, as we are today, that we did nothing wrong. Which is why we didn’t ask for a clarification."

Racing Point don't agree with FIA

"We knew the intent of the rule because I voted for it. We saw the way it was written. We received data from Mercedes on the non-listed part in 2018 and we used that data to design the brake ducts when we brought uprights from them. It’s completely legal," Nevertheless, Racing Point received from the stewards a penalty of fifteen World Cup points and a fine of 400,000 euros.

Szafnauer even says that representatives of the FIA did not come with any questions about the design during an inspection at the factory of Racing Point at the beginning of the season. "We hid nothing. We were completely open. We allowed the FIA to look at absolutely everything. We invited them to look at everything. We even talked about the brake ducts. They said ‘how did you get to these brake ducts’? We explained it and they said ‘okay’ and moved on. So we thought that was it. They had plenty of opportunity."