How F1's overachiever is making up for lost ground

When GP Racing first learned of Racing Point's plans to photograph its new car livery at an Austrian mountain lake location, our thoughts naturally turned to the film Fitzcarraldo, the plot of which revolves around a man's doomed attempt to physically haul a paddle-steamer over a steep and forested hill from one Peruvian river to another. In a case of life imitating art, stories abound of this troubled production: several extras died during filming, a labourer is claimed to have amputated his own foot with a chainsaw after being bitten by a poisonous snake, angry locals burned down the set, and director Werner Herzog later confessed to plotting to murder lead actor Klaus Kinski.

Similarly, Racing Point's journey has not been without pain since founder Eddie Jordan sold the outfit to a Russian steel magnate - the first of several eccentric owners - in 2004. Investment has been sporadic at best but the team has become rightly acclaimed for punching above its weight and, in the hybrid era, it rose to 'best of the rest' status behind the leading trio of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull. The last owners' financial problems put paid to that; Lawrence Stroll's consortium rescued the assets and personnel but had to start again from zero points in the dying races of the 2018 season, and last year's car was a belt-and-braces job because lack of funds had strangled its early development.

This mountainous launch, besides serving as a visual metaphor for what the team hopes to achieve, represents a bolder, more confident start to what will be its last season as Racing Point before it rebrands as Aston Martin in 2021. Water company BWT replaces SportPesa as title sponsor and has pledged to drill a new well in Gambia (as part of a wider clean-water project there) every time the team finishes in the points.

"We wanted to make a big splash," says team principal Otmar Szafnauer. "Taking title sponsorship is a big step for BWT so that's why we're doing it here [BWT is based in nearby Mondsee]. And you know, finishing seventh last year, we do have a mountain to climb - but we're up for the challenge. Everything that I've heard about the new car [a Mercedes 'clone' that, when unveiled in Spain, looked very different to the predecessor employed for this photshoot], how it's been coming along, has been pleasing and we've got a lot of hope. I think the midfield is going to be tough again. But we're up for the fight and, at the end of it, not to try to predict anything, we'd hope to be at the top of the midfield."

Over its many previous incarnations, this is a team which has mastered the art of making a little go along way. It has one of F1's least ostentatious factories - the canteen, for instance, is in a Portakabin. That is set to change in the coming months as a new facility takes shape on neighbouring land. There have also been several strategic hires in the technical department.

But adding people and infrastructure doesn't guarantee success. Renault has invested heavily in staff and facilities at its Enstone base and, although it finished fourth in the constructors' championship in 2018, in 2019 it fell away again rather than achieving its goal of consolidating fourth and getting substantially closer to the top three on raw pace. The comparison is significant because Otmar says "closing the gap to the top three" is one of Racing Point's targets this season.

"It's not an easy thing to do," he says. "Over the winter you've got two forces to deal with, really. One is the fact that those guys [the top three] still have the biggest amount of resource and have the infrastructure in place to out-develop us. But the other force, which is in our favour, is that the regulations aren't changing. Usually when those don't change, the big teams have found the gains early on while we find the gains later. That means we have an opportunity now to catch up. But it's still hard when they [Mercedes] have 1100 people and we have 465. Are we twice as smart? No..."

But several other teams, such as Renault and McLaren, have been in flux over the past few seasons, with restructure after restructure. What Racing Point does have in its favour is a settled technical team - a remarkable achievement given how close the whole operation came to going bust before the Stroll consortium's takeover. It's a credit to Szafnauer and technical director Andy Green's powers of persuasion that so many talented engineers stayed loyal when other teams swooped in to pick at the carcass.

Tight finances under the previous ownership often caused bottlenecks in development since outside suppliers would naturally refuse to undertake further work until outstanding bills were paid

"That [continuity] helps," says Szafnauer. "We've added some senior personnel from other teams. When Lawrence and the consortium took over we were at 405 people. We've added 60 and some of them were to help the development cycle happen quicker - the faster you put parts on the car and analyse them, the sooner you get an idea of what the next thing is. Speeding that process up was a key ambition. And we've added senior technical people who bring their own ideas and creativity about how to make the car go faster.

"So we've grown, but I still think we're the second smallest."

The effects of that investment are showing already. Green describes the RP20 car as "entirely new" and designed "from scratch... which is very exciting, because the team hasn't been in a position to do this in a very long time."

Before it can continue raising its engineering headcount though, Racing Point faces the additional burden this season of organising a factory move - all the while balancing in-season development with the shift to 2021 research.
 The new building won't just be a change of scene, it represents a change in culture for a team which has traditionally outsourced its production.

Tight finances under the previous ownership often caused bottlenecks in development since outside suppliers would naturally refuse to undertake further work until outstanding bills were paid. That manifested itself in aero research missing steps because new components never made it to the autoclave, let alone the racetrack. Building more components in-house could - should - yield a better development trajectory.

"We want to control our own destiny in terms of the timing of putting things on the car," says Szafnauer. "Getting everyone under one roof is also important in terms of communication - if you communicate better you make fewer mistakes and things happen quicker. We'll have the simulator in there, all the designers, the machine shop. And we'll have more space for more people. All those efficiencies will be built in to the new facility, plus R&D will be expanded, to allow for pushing the boundaries of the design a little more.

"We set ourselves the goal of moving to the new factory without disrupting the technical team," Otmar adds. "It's a big year with the new rules coming. We're going to have to stop developing this car at some point and turn our eyes to 2021 while building the new factory. It's a recipe for disaster unless you manage that change with the goal of zero disruption in mind."

One thing you won't find on the new campus is a windtunnel. Racing Point is now using Mercedes', having abandoned its own in favour of the Toyota tunnel in Cologne back in 2015. Conducting research in another country brought inconvenience and extra costs, as well as adding inertia to the design process. When the shift to the Mercedes tunnel was announced, naturally the conspiracy theorists prognosticated this was a precursor to Racing Point in effect becoming a Mercedes 'B-team'.

The team is already fielding queries to this effect following the launch of its 2020 car, questions Green deflects by describing Racing Point's approach as 'Haas MkII' - in other words, a close technical partnership. Given Racing Point's ongoing investment in new facilities and personnel, and its switch of identity to Aston Martin, becoming a B-team seems unlikely longer term. Szafnauer also dismisses it, suggesting the arrangement with Mercedes is no different to Racing Point's use of the Toyota facility.

Being attached to a prestige name ought to help the team access a new strata of premium brands as potential sponsors, but on-track performance has to roughly align with the image

"We and McLaren used the Cologne tunnel," he says. "And our cars are totally different. We put our own model in there, collect our own data on our own computers and we walk away."

In January, Lawrence Stroll became chairman of Aston Martin after leading another consortium of businessmen - including JCB founder Anthony Bamford - in a £500million rescue of the troubled prestige car maker. At that point the company was worth a quarter of what its market valuation had been when it floated in 2018. So, like Racing Point, which will be renamed Aston Martin Racing next season, it has something of a mountain to climb to recapture past glories.

Being attached to a prestige name ought to help the team access a new strata of premium brands as potential sponsors, but on-track performance has to roughly align with the image. F1's midfield scrap was vicious last year and is likely to be more so this season, given stability in the technical rules. What Racing Point needs is for both drivers to finish in the top ten at every race.

"The team has never been in this position before [having an all-new car], so I'd say that this is the best base that we've had for many years," says Sergio Perez. He has a proven aptitude for bagging whatever points are on the table at any grand prix - Szafnauer says he's "at the peak of his career" - but the contribution of the team's other driver is less certain. Lance Stroll urgently needs to improve his qualifying performances
to give himself less to do in the races.

Perhaps it's apt that the son of the team's saviour has a critical role to play in its ongoing prosperity. Here's hoping - at the risk of labouring the mountain metaphors to breaking point - that it's not an uphill struggle.