Formula 1 news: I haven’t read what the FIA regulations governing F1 say about one team copying someone else’s design, but I’m pretty sure Force India, Racing Point and now Aston Martin all got away with it.
In the past few years, Racing Point has had a fairly easy time copying the design of Mercedes and even getting the name “Pink Mercedes” or “Mercedes 2.0”. On the other hand, it works very well for the team. Not last year, though.
Due to the aero rules of 2021, which affected teams with low-rake cars, particularly Aston and Mercedes, the former suffered the most, and as a result, the team finished 7th in the constructors’ category, as opposed to P4 in 2020.
Aston’s Chief Technical Officer Andrew Green says the team’s decision to clone the 2019 Mercedes car opened many possibilities for its future, which will make the 2022 challenger even stronger.
Formula 1 news: AM not only followed Mercedes blindly at every step
Andrew Green says, “We took a look at the car and found out why this car was significantly faster than any other. We did our own learning. There is no shortcut for it.
“It’s not a copy, it’s developing a solution that gives you a rough idea of what the answer you think is, but you have yet to get there and it takes a lot of development and work to understand.
“In some ways, it’s even more difficult because sometimes the directions lead you away from what you think is the right answer. I think the team did a great job understanding the philosophy behind it.
“If you look up and down on the grid, many other teams have followed the same philosophy. They did what we did last year and they made the fastest car philosophy their own.
“It’s not a new concept, everyone just stuck to it because I think we did a good job and other teams were a bit upset that we did a good job.”
Aston did everything he could
The team was able to copy Mercedes’ 2020 gearbox and rear suspension design for 2021 and only issued its development brands for the monocoque.
Like most teams, however, the focus was on 2022 and as such it had a pretty difficult season as it chose not to upgrade to a large extent.
“In the limited development time, which was actually quite short, it moved as far away as we could in the time available and the reason for this was the change in the aerodynamics regulations introduced over the winter. “Says green.
“We were required to do this because updating the car, like the regulation update, took massive damage and it took a significant amount of resources and development just to get back up, which was still way behind the car . We suffered quite a lot. “
