Annoying development in F1: 'Ten years ago, teams were much more secretive'

Racing Point came under fire at the beginning of this season because they copied the Mercedes car. According to James Key, part of the problem has been solved, but there is still a bigger issue that is completely open for discussion.

Copying Racing Point

Racing Point did come up with a very well known car at the beginning of 2020 and that didn't come as a surprise. The car from Racing Point was a copy of the Mercedes from 2019. Racing Point had used data and images from Mercedes to retroactively find out how they could imitate that car.

A great success, because the car of Andrew Green and his colleagues goes around the tracks well. According to Key, choices have now been made by Formula 1 to curb this copying, but ensuring that teams get ideas and ways of working transferred from other teams seems almost impossible to prevent.

Conversations over coffee

''It would be very good if at some point you could really say that the intelligent property really belongs to the team itself. That a team really came up with that car from the start and then designed it. If we can get that done, then as a sport we are in an ideal place,'' says the technical director of McLaren to Racefans.net. However, he does see one big problem.

''You can't stop the conversations at the coffee machine. I don't know how you can lay down rules for that, because everyone can talk to each other in a quiet corner. In the old days that wasn't the case at all. Ten years ago, teams kept a lot more secrets from each other, so I'd like to get that back. That's what competition is all about for me in the end'', Key concludes.