Why Racing Point's 'copycat' shouldn't be controversial

'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery'. It's the oft trotted-out phrase created presumably to placate those who have been pushed into the shade by a copy-cat, ostensibly taking full credit for something they didn't produce.

That phrase seldom placates anybody, least of all a university lecturer after popular plagiarism software Turnitin has discovered an essay with more red flags than the 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix. Not that this author ever went through that process, although it fleetingly became a consideration after too many late nights in a library...

But you can't put a Formula 1 car through Turnitin.

That said, it became apparent that during 2020 pre-season testing at Barcelona that many teams would perhaps favour the design equivalent - after they'd had their feathers ruffled when Racing Point's RP20 first burst out of the garage and cut a particularly familiar figure.

We'd been somewhat scornful when Racing Point pencilled in an elaborate livery launch session sans its 2020 car, with candid shots of the old, repainted car sprawled in front of the Mondsee lakefront. But it all made sense when the RP20 emerged from the pitlane, looking as if it was the Mercedes W10's long-lost younger brother.

Quickly, albeit perhaps not affectionately, it became known as the "Pink Mercedes". And although Will Buxton's quip of "Tracing Point" on F1's testing coverage was amusing the first time, it wasn't once the Twitter masses had regurgitated the wisecrack like a sheep chewing through a mouthful of grass, spewed up at least five times before, and now devoid of all nutritional value.

But let's be honest, the RP20 looks incredibly similar to the Mercedes W10. Incredibly similar. In a technical rundown produced during the first test, yours truly drew plenty of comparisons between the two machines and, although there are key differences where Racing Point has put in its own spin, the overall theme is largely the same.

A real-world example might be found in a supermarket cereal department, where the Coco Pops stand proudly next to the store-brand variant with Coco the Monkey's budget simian cousin adorning the box. Although, if we're to go off testing form, the RP20 might be a little better than that...

When Racing Point's new charge finally broke ground, people were astounded by its brazen similarity to Mercedes. And indeed, during that first week, Racing Point's media session with technical chief Andrew Green was incredibly well attended. At least a quarter of the table was occupied with recording devices as Green batted off the questions modestly - he knew that Racing Point's plan was a stroke of genius.

"Everyone has the same opportunity to do exactly what we've just done. They've elected not to, so I don't think they have the grounds to complain" Andrew Green

Racing Point, and previously when it was Force India, has been running the Mercedes rear-end for a number of years - and it had a similar technical link-up with McLaren before its ill-fated switch to Honda.

It had also followed the high-rake concept pioneered by the Red Bull team, where the rear of the car is raised considerably more than the front to expand the effective volume of the diffuser. But with a Mercedes rear-end that wasn't exactly designed for the task that Green and his technical team wanted it to perform, Racing Point's performance had a clear ceiling.

By switching to a Mercedes-style concept, where there's a reduced rake angle, the team figured it could be a more natural fit for the parts it takes from elsewhere. But that, of course, led them down a path where it could draw on further concepts from the six-time title-winning outfit.

"It made a lot of sense for us because of the hardware we're having to run," Green explained during testing.

"It's trying to fight and try and develop a car using a different philosophy from the hardware that you're getting. We found it to be a real struggle, so I can see why if you're a team and you get a gearbox and suspension from Red Bull, the chances are you're going to be looking at a Red Bull-type philosophy to complement it, because that is what it has been designed for."

And that makes sense, but many were still upset that Racing Point could so flagrantly "copy" the title-winning car - as if nobody in F1 has ever copied each other...

Haas's Ferrari B-team model has certainly courted controversy, but there's seldom uproar when its new car appears each season. The American team's 2020 car looks incredibly similar to Ferrari's 2019 machine - perhaps even more so than Racing Point's car looks like the Mercedes, but perhaps the anger is diluted by expectation. The Mercedes, after all, is a particularly distinctive machine.

But Green contends that everybody else had the same opportunity to follow Mercedes' philosophy, and answered a continual barrage of questions over the reactions of others with an air of 'why did nobody else think of doing it?'.

"They had the opportunity," Green added. "Everyone has the same opportunity to do exactly what we've just done. They've elected not to. Maybe they'll prove to be right and we'll be wrong. I don't think they have the grounds to complain. They all had the same opportunity."

Green (below) later revisited that line during the second test, albeit more jaded by the continued suggestion of legality.

"I don't know what they've got to complain about, what we've done is completely legal," he said. "All we are doing is racing with the rules that are written, which I think is the idea of the game.

"You're given a set of rules and you go as fast as you can. So that's what we're doing. We've been given a set of rules, we're going as fast as we can.

"And if other teams haven't taken the route that we've taken for some reasons unknown to us that's their decision. They had the opportunity to do exactly what we did but they elected not to - for reasons I don't know."

One complaint that rankles is that this is somehow symptomatic of the problems with modern F1.

The B-team model is a controversial one, and the delayed now-2022 regulations also contain a number of prescriptive and open-source parts in order to cut costs and create the aerodynamic effect that F1's in-house research team has aimed for to boost closer racing. Those ideas, and the cross-pollination of aero solutions in F1, are used as a stick by critics of a certain disposition to beat the championship.

But the spread of ideas and teams adopting another's designs has always been part of F1 - even in the days most regularly viewed through rose-tinted eyewear.

Toyota leaned so heavily on the Ferrari F2002 for its 2003 car that the team was actually taken to court over espionage allegations

Arguably, F1's biggest gamechanger was the Lotus 72.

As the grid was littered by skittish, tubular cars with wings on stilts, the 72 popularised the wedge-shaped, flat-bottomed design of the 1970s. After it made its F1 debut in 1970, every F1 constructor thereafter - across the next three-or-four years - at least made an attempt to copy Lotus's homework to replicate the same results.

It happened again once Lotus popularised ground effects at the end of the '70s; the Williams FW07 was commonly regarded as a Lotus 79 clone, but with minor refinements to best make use of the Venturi tunnels underneath.

There are many more examples of F1 teams drawing heavy inspiration from the title winner from the previous season, and at the end of the ground effects era, grids in the mid-1980s were full of Brabham BT52-alikes.

Other copy-cattery includes Rial's attempt to channel the 1987 Ferrari with its ARC1, multiple teams peppering the 1999/2000 seasons with McLaren-influenced designs, and Toyota leaning so heavily on the Ferrari F2002 for its 2003 car that the team was actually taken to court over espionage allegations.

So perhaps, in context of F1's rich history and the amount of design overlap that has weaved its way throughout that lore, Racing Point is actually acting in the spirit of the championship and treading a well-travelled path.

The team has been adamant that it designed the car itself; Mercedes has not transferred any data to the team, which would make the design illegal.

"[What we take from Mercedes] we're limited to gearbox," Green explained in February. "And some of the outboard suspension.

"All the internal suspension is all Racing Point designed, always has been, and obviously all the aerodynamic side and chassis side has to be Racing Point. There is no data transfer there - it's not allowed in the regulations, it never has been, and never will be. All that is a Racing Point from that."

In that case, the team has avoided the scenario that the Arrows squad became embroiled in during its first F1 season in 1978. Formed by an exodus of ex-Shadow personnel, designer Tony Southgate took some of the concepts from the team's DN9 chassis to quickly pen Arrows' FA1 in a few months. The High Court later found that at least 70% of the Arrows was identical to the Shadow, forcing the team to accelerate the development of its A1 design.

Racing Point's situation is nothing like that - it's simply a continuation of a design choice that teams have employed for decades.

It does ultimately beg the question why others haven't explored the Mercedes concept previously, especially given that teams have been willing to add to the growing litany of Ferrari-inspired front wings - so there's absolutely no reticence to pull ideas from elsewhere. Perhaps it's the level of understanding that Racing Point has reached, with its increased investment, that has provoked envy from the teams around it on the grid...

But the plot has unintentionally thickened, thanks to the unwelcome impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Now that the current ruleset has been frozen for an extra year to ease the financial burden that most teams will be facing owing to the lack of income, Racing Point's one-year roll-of-the-dice will now serve the team for an extra season, most crucially as it changes its name to Aston Martin.

However, if the RP20 doesn't have two years' worth of growth left in its development cycle, the Turnitin-monitored coursework submission might not be the biggest issue that the team has to face - it's the viva voce exam on track.