Can F1's 'best' small team win again?

"It was evident from day one," recalls Sergio Perez. "I came from McLaren and I remember the first time visiting the factory at Force India. It was a shock straight away because I could see the deficit they had on money.

A transition from mighty McLaren at the end of 2013, when it was then only at the beginning of its slide from the front of the grid, to the squad then known as Force India is a dramatic lesson in the disparity of Formula 1 team budgets. But not so when it comes to results.

In Sergio Perez's first season at Force India, the team finished sixth - one place and 26 points behind McLaren. The following season it was fifth, with McLaren falling to ninth in the first of its disastrous years with Honda. Then came the golden years. In 2016, Force India usurped Williams as best of the rest behind F1's Mercedes/Ferrari/Red Bull 'Class A' (although Williams had impressively finished third in 2014 and 2015). And in 2017 it did so again, finishing fourth again despite the major regulations overhaul.

Then came the end of Force India. In 2018, the team's long-standing financial difficulties became too much. For so many years, Vijay Mallya's team had been operating on a cost cliff-edge, while team finances across the grid rose ever higher. Cashflow was the issue as, like many teams, Force India relied on money from F1's prize pot as well as sponsorship, but it did not enjoy the constructors' (CCB) and historical bonuses paid to some of its rivals.

"We still scrutinise every pound spent - we're just spending more pounds" Otmar Szafnauer

Bills had to be paid earlier than money arrived, which led to an increasing problem. This was reflected in the cars the team was producing - each season the carryover was considerable and in-season upgrades were few.

At the 2018 Hungarian Grand Prix, news broke that Perez had launched legal action, triggering a process that placed the team into administration. "At the time, I was really disappointed how it came out on the news," he says now. "They put it out that I was basically trying to get my salary. And at the time that was the least important thing."

But Perez's salary was actually a crucial part of saving the team. It made him a major creditor - as was engine supplier Mercedes - and the move placed Force India into administration. But this meant it could stay alive and see off a winding-up petition that had been launched by a technical supplier and would have likely killed the team.

From there, despite some initial resistance from other teams, not to mention rival bidder Dmitry Mazepin, a consortium led by Lawrence Stroll bought Force India's assets, and it reappeared at the Belgian GP after the 2018 summer break, essentially as a new entity.

The 'new' Force India defaulted to zero points, but still ended the season on 52 in seventh place. Added to the 59 erased points scored by the 'old' squad, that 111 total would have put the team's combined two guises in fifth, just 11 points adrift of fourth-placed Renault.

In 2019 it was reborn as Racing Point, with Stroll's son Lance brought in to partner Perez. Its RP19 car started out essentially as the final machine of the Force India era, as the 2018 financial catastrophe greatly impinged on the design process for the following season. But bolting on several mid-season upgrade packages eventually turned its fortunes around.

Perez scored 'Class B' wins in Belgium, Mexico and Abu Dhabi (to follow-up his early-season 'win' in Azerbaijan), with his home-race charge at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez a particular highlight. The team ended up seventh on 73 points, just 19 short of beating fifth-placed Renault's haul (with Perez's ex-employer McLaren finally back up the order in fourth). In 2021, the team will become known as 'Aston Martin F1 Team' after Stroll invested in the sportscar manufacturer at the beginning of 2020.

Despite all the turmoil, Force India/Racing Point's lowest constructors' championship position is the ninth place it took in 2009, the year after Mallya bought the ex-Jordan squad, which at the time was called Spyker. Even then it secured a podium with Giancarlo Fisichella's near-win at Spa, and the outfit added five more (all with Perez) in the 11 years to today. Since 2014, when F1's turbo-hybrid rules crystallised the championship's current 'class' imbalance, only Williams has scored more rostrum visits as a Class B squad.

Given that success and stability in terms of its constructors' finishing position (there has been no sudden decline a la McLaren and more recently Williams, and little Lotus/Renault-like fluctuation), it's little wonder that the team has developed a reputation as F1's best 'pound-for-pound' squad.

"If we look back at when I started at Force India [in 2009], we had 280 employees at the time, and at the time of administration we were up to 405," says Racing Point team boss Otmar Szafnauer. "So we didn't grow very quickly, but our growth was planned and we grew in areas that were going to have the biggest impact on performance, because we always had a limited amount of budget. Every penny or every pound that we spent had to be considered.

"And then when Lawrence came in, he gave us a bigger budget - so significantly more money. Although we've got bigger resource now and we can do more, the one thing that we've got to make sure of - and so far so good - is that we don't lose that efficiency that we had in the past. So, we still scrutinise every pound spent - we're just spending more pounds."

How financial squeeze forged bonds

Despite his initial deductions regarding the team's financial health, Perez realised that "as soon as we hit the track, I could see that there was a lot of potential in the team".

As is so often the case in motorsport, a well-run operation can overcome many challenges. Szafnauer heads a squad that has a motorsport history stretching back to the early 1980s, and includes familiar names such as long-time technical director Andrew Green (who joined in 2010 after leaving his previous post as Red Bull's head of R&D) and Andy Stevenson, the team's sporting director since 2005 and a stalwart since its Jordan days.

Szafnauer estimates that "even though we have a significantly bigger budget, say 30-40 per cent more than what we had" after Stroll's buyout (he puts the team's budget when it was securing its brace of fourth places at $110m), he still believes Racing Point has "got the lowest budget and the least amount of people in the pitlane".

"We're still the smallest Formula 1 team," he adds. "Maybe Haas has less people because a lot of their design and manufacturing work is done by Dallara. But if you added those equivalent heads in, I would suspect we're probably smaller than them as well."

"I've never seen something like this in Formula 1, how everyone stuck together" Sergio Perez

Not all motorsport teams are comfortable with a plucky-underdog label, as it implies a level of negativity or superiority, depending on perspective. But given how bad things were getting during the final Force India years - which were further complicated by the legal wrangles facing Mallya (who earlier in April lost his appeal in a UK High Court ruling against his extradition to India) and his Sahara Group partner - it's a badge of honour for the squad. Even if it's not the precise term it uses.

"Maybe as an efficiently run team - that equates to underdog, if you know what I mean?," asks Szafnauer. "If you add more money than what we've had before, which is happening, and you keep the same efficiency, then the output is going to be greater. I have no issue with having a reputation of being an efficiently run team."

Although the end of the Mallya era led to stronger financial footing, it was a still a painful process for the team, with much uncertainty over the four weeks between that year's races in Hungary and Belgium. Perez felt the need to address his mechanics after the administration process had been set in place, stressing that he had been "looking at the big picture, knowing that the thing was very close to basically shutting down".

He spoke to them just before qualifying at the Hungaroring, where he and then team-mate Esteban Ocon lined up 19th and 18th on the grid respectively, before rising to 13th (Ocon) and 14th (Perez) in the race. Then they headed into the summer break, not knowing if the team would return.

But with Stroll's consortium accepted by the administrators, the team was back at Spa - minus several sponsor logos and other branding relating to the previous Force India entity. There, Ocon and Perez qualified third and fourth - getting in among Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton's fight for the lead on the first lap - and finished fifth and sixth, with Perez ahead, in a resounding 'Class B' triumph.

"[The near-collapse] was something that really put us together as a team, as a family, because we went through the worst," says Perez. But it was so much uncertainty as well of what was going to happen - if someone was going to buy it or not. And we just came out of it very strongly.

"I've never seen something like this in Formula 1, how everyone stuck together. Yeah, we probably lost some people. But I say the key people inside the team, everyone stuck together and I think that determination is the one that will make us very successful in the future."

The 2019 hangover

Although Stroll's investment meant the team could finally start making parts that had been designed earlier in 2018, the final financial squeeze of the Force India era had an impact on the new start as Racing Point the following year.

Green explains that the RP19 was "already well in progress" during the team's near-collapse as "we'd had to make quite significant decisions on it prior to the takeover, otherwise we wouldn't have had a car to run in 2019".

This meant that, although money was now available, the initial results of that investment would not be seen for some time - as ever in F1... There were also added challenges when it came to implementing the 2019 regulation changes, which were principally centred on new front and rear-wing designs, and which Green says "had a knock-on effect that we hadn't predicted, which took us a while to get out of".

"We had the opportunity to continually update the car in a manner that we'd never been able to do before" Andrew Green

But the team was finally able to make the big car upgrades the Force India budgets had generally precluded. This included updates to move the RP19 on from its interim testing specification into the new season, followed by further upgrades throughout the first half of 2019.

In the second half of the campaign - particularly the major change to its nose design at the Belgian GP that abandoned the distinctive nostrils initially added to the B-spec version of the 2015 Force India, and a major aerodynamic upgrade introduced in Singapore - further developments boosted the team. The nose change was aimed at giving Perez and Stroll more front-end stability, and in the final 11 races of 2019 they took their respective points hauls from 13 and six at the British GP (round 10 of 21) to 52 and 21 after the Abu Dhabi finale.

"What [the investment] really did affect was how we could then go about developing the car that we had," says Green. "We had the opportunity to continually update the car in a manner that we'd never been able to do before to try and get the maximum out of it. By the end of the 2019 season, we'd developed quite heavily on the car and we were actually very close to where we targeted to be by the time we got to the end of the season."

But the biggest proof of the team's new financial health was set to come in 2020...

Years of knowledge sacrificed for results

At Racing Point's 2020 season launch in Mondsee in Austria - back in February, before the coronavirus pandemic swept world sport away for the foreseeable future - the RP19 was wheeled out in an updated, but still utterly pink, livery.

This reflected the team's new title sponsorship deal with water-tech company BWT, and there was a palpable air of positivity around the squad. Just why the team was so excited became apparent at the first Barcelona pre-season test a few days later. The RP20 hit the track with little fanfare - there was no pitlane roll-out alongside Haas and Alfa Romeo - but its debut caused an uproar.

The car, as is well known by now, bares an unmistakable resemblance to the Mercedes W10 that took the German manufacturer to double title success in 2019, following in the footsteps of the five Silver Arrows machines that have done likewise since 2014. Perez, preparing to embark on his 10th F1 season, had appeared relaxed and assured at the Mondsee event. Now it was clear why.

"I was confident because I knew what was going on behind [the scenes]," he says of the development of the RP20, which ended up as the fifth fastest car overall across the two tests.

"I was [also] very pleased that all what we saw has worked well. I was optimistic because it's the first time that I could go back to the engineers and tell them, 'Focus on these things and make sure we improve them.' And straight away they were working on them. We have a good car and a good plan on how we want to do things.

"Everybody is holding back and trying different things [in testing]. So obviously we didn't see that full potential, the full picture of our car, because pretty much everyone hides a bit. But I can tell you Barcelona is not our strongest circuit either. So, for Melbourne we had big hopes, very big hopes - we were going to be extremely competitive there. But let's wait and see when we can race."

The RP20 is the first full demonstration of what the new investment has allowed the team to do in terms of car design. The 2020 machine is not a carryover from that of 2019, as was the case with so many of its predecessors.

In addition to the similar front-wing and nose parts (as well as other aerodynamic parts further back) on the W10, the RP20 has shed the Red Bull-inspired high-rake concept that the team and many others had long used. That approach ended up frustrating the team, as it required a hefty compromise to align with the Mercedes gearbox, which was optimised for the low-rake approach favoured by the works squad.

"We were always compromised at the rear," says Szafnauer. "And we used to complain about that all the time, but we didn't have the resources to do anything about it, because we always had to carry over and do the best we could. Well, after the consortium, this is the first opportunity where we could say, 'You know what? We're buying that gearbox, let's have the aerodynamic concept around the rear work with the gearbox that we're getting.'"

So, with "no obligation to carry over a single thing in 2020", Green and his team simply shelved the years of experience they had gathered around the high-rake concept and got to work on the design that they had seen Mercedes ride to unprecedented F1 success.

Before not very long at all, phrases such as 'Pink Mercedes' and 'Tracing Point' were being uttered by rival squads and internet snarks

"It seemed just so logical," explains Green. "Why fight against this [low-rake] concept that they've been running and the [high-rake] concept that we'd adopted. Why not just align the two and go from there?

"We had the opportunity to do it and we grabbed hold of it, and everybody was up for it. It was a significant challenge - just psychologically - to talk to the team and say, 'Look, what you've done previously, you're going to have to shelve that for now, we're going to have to go down a different route.'

"It's a different type of learning and it's a concept that we had no real understanding of. It was going to be a significant challenge because it's not a case of just taking a concept, looking at pictures and running it - it's understanding the philosophy behind it and the concept behind it. Everybody just really wanted to do it and really wanted to show what they could do given a clean piece of paper."

But this approach brought extra attention from rival squads, and with that came a threat.

Another political storm builds

Among the many fascinating strands of the 2018 Force India rescue was the reaction of rival teams. Under the terms of F1's Concorde Agreement, if a squad goes into administration and gets saved then all the other teams must agree to allow it continue to receive the payments provided by F1 to its previous regime.

That didn't happen with the 'new' and 'old' Force India, as McLaren, Renault and Williams held out - concerned about the potential for a clear Mercedes B team to emerge.

What eventually happened, mainly because the sale couldn't go through in the two-week deadline set by the administrators because of the legal complexities surrounding Mallya and Sahara in India, was that Lawrence Stroll's consortium formed a new company - Racing Point. This bought Force India's assets and was allowed to enter the championship from Spa onwards, with no points and with a reduced prize-money allocation, via a little-known FIA 'late-entry' rule.

That political saga should be considered when assessing the context around the RP20's public debut. Before not very long at all, as Perez in particular was producing eyecatching lap times and long-run efforts, phrases such as 'Pink Mercedes' and 'Tracing Point' were being uttered by rival squads and internet snarks. In the Melbourne paddock there was talk of protests being prepared - before the event was aborted by the unfolding COVID-19 crisis - and Renault team boss Cyril Abiteboul has since hinted that this possibility remains if/when the 2020 season gets going.

But Green is resolute that Racing Point has acted within the rules: "We don't really know what the grounds are that they are thinking of protesting about. When the car launched, we talked to the FIA about it. The FIA came round to the factory and looked at what we'd done and the designs of the car. They even took the design data from Mercedes for last year's car and checked it against ours. They did a thorough check. And they are completely happy that the car that we've got on track has been designed by us.

"It may have some similarities to the Mercedes, but it's just similar - it's not the same. And so there is no protest there. They can shout and scream as much as they want, but I think what they're actually shouting and screaming about is the fact that they've missed a trick. And that's what they're upset about."

Racing Point had initially decided that the W10-inspired approach was worth trying because even if it didn't work out, the 2021 rules reset meant only one year would be wasted. But the efforts to ease the economic impact of the pandemic on F1's teams mean the 2020 cars will be used next year - albeit with a few modifications allowed under an expected token development system.

So, if the RP20 is as good as it looked in testing - Autosport ranked it as the clear 'Class B' leader - and it matches Perez's Melbourne expectations at whichever venue is eventually the season opener, then questions about its legality are likely to continue. But the team is firm that it is operating within the rules.

Aston Martin on the horizon

At the end of January, it was announced that Lawrence Stroll had bought a 16.7% stake in the Aston Martin Lagonda road car company for £182million. His investment, and appointment as Aston executive chairman, was formally confirmed at the end of March, with his Yew Tree Consortium contributing £171m of £536m gathered in a fundraising round of investments and an equity raise.

The deal means Racing Point will be rebranded as the 'works' Aston Martin F1 Team, in a similar way that Red Bull (which will now have its Aston sponsorship deal cease at the end of 2020) can be considered a works operation with Honda - along the lines of the mid-1990s tie-ups between engine builders and existing squads, rather than the manufacturer team-purchasing splurge of the 2000s. But at the same time it is more than the branding exercise going on at the Sauber-operated Alfa Romeo squad.

"There'll be some technology transfer, mainly from the F1 team into their new road cars," says Szafnauer. "We've got a windtunnel at Brackley, for example, that they're going to be using, and we'll give them some expertise on how to do some aerodynamics for their road cars. And I'm sure there will be other technology transfer as well.

"Just like Ferrari goes racing and it helps their road cars, Aston Martin will go Formula 1 racing now and that'll help their road cars. So it's a lot happening, but there will be some synergies that will be a win-win for both companies."

But against the backdrop of Stroll's investment, Aston's financial state looks perilous. The company share price has crashed from its stock market launch of £19 per share to recent lows of under £1.50, and it has been hit hard by the impact of the coronavirus shutdowns. One company statement said Aston did not have the cash to survive another 12 months, but it has taken steps - including the £536m cash injection - to improve its financial footing. Intriguingly, Stroll ally Toto Wolff has personally bought 0.95% of Aston, although he remains committed to his role as Mercedes team principal.

"It's going to be our job to make sure that Aston Martin is as competitive as it needs to be to compete with the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes" Otmar Szafnauer

Despite all the uncertainty of the pandemic, the Racing Point rebrand is still on, and Stroll has reiterated his commitment to the project, saying in a recent statement that "I am committed to Formula 1 with a long-term vision and [the coronavirus shutdown] is just a temporary pause in the journey".

"It's all happening, it's still going ahead - we will be Aston Martin Formula 1 Team next year; we will still build the new factory [at Silverstone, which was approved last April]," insists Szafnauer, while Green says the RP20's moniker will change to include an "Aston Martin reference". But it's too early to tell if a pink Aston takes to the tracks in 2021 ("We haven't even raced one race this year with the livery that we introduced in Mondsee!" jokes Szafnauer).

"An iconic, worldwide brand being back in Formula 1 is definitely a huge boost for the team, puts a lot of pressure in the team," concludes Perez. "But I think this is what the team needed to go to the next step."

Where can such a storied team go from here?

In Mondsee, Szafnauer stated that Racing Point's target for the season (whenever it starts!) is to retake fourth place, and pick up podiums. Based on the team's performance in testing that is a realistic aim, with Ferrari even suggesting that Racing Point could give it cause for concern, given the apparent struggles the team had with its SF1000.

But with the Aston rebrand firmly in mind, it's worth considering how far the former Jordan squad can reach - and if it could indeed pick up a first win since the 2003 Brazilian GP. Much will depend on the ongoing negotiations regarding F1's cost cap, and the push to bring it down further for 2021 in light of the pandemic squeeze. But that is the next aim.

"It's going to be our job [Szafnauer's and Green's] and the job of the 463 other people that work here to make sure that Aston Martin is as competitive as it needs to be to compete with the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes," says Szafnauer.

Racing Point has a long history of doing a lot with not many pounds. Now that it has more pounds to spend, and its rivals are seemingly set to spend fewer of their own, logic would suggest that a slick operation has what it takes to succeed. That is if F1's new financial rules can close up the field.