Revealing the full scale of Racing Point's expansion

Racing Point plans to move to the front of the Formula 1 grid through fresh investment that will include an entirely new factory. The team will file its application for planning permission this month and hopes to start building later this year, aiming for completion in time for the 2021 F1 season.

"This is a new chapter, the dawn of a new era, and there is huge energy from the shareholders to invest and help the team become a regular podium contender in the future," says Racing Point team principal Otmar Szafnauer.

"The team has never been more stable or in better hands and this project aims to attract and retain the best staff in F1."

Racing Point's current factory is based opposite the gates to the Silverstone grand prix circuit, covering an area of three acres. It was originally built for the Jordan squad's F1 debut in 1991 and has housed the various iterations of the team since then, including Midland, Spyker and Force India. But the factory has long outgrown the staffing levels required for a modern F1 organisation and is in critical need of redevelopment.

Over the past decade the team's headcount has grown substantially. Last August, when Racing Point took over, staffing levels had increased to 405 from 280 in 2009. Since then the team has added another 20 employees and plans to expand by an additional 180 over the next two years as it seeks to achieve better performance.

When the consortium headed up by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll took over Force India last summer, one of the priorities was to look at developing the Dadford Road base. Since then a deal has been struck to purchase the land around the site to increase the size of the Racing Point HQ ten-fold, to 30 acres.

There is a two-stage redevelopment of the site planned, and the first phase is already underway. At present an overspill of 125 employees are based at a second location in Brackley, but they are being moved into Dadford Road with rented Portakabins housing staff in the car parks around the factory. Warehouse space is also being rented for the team's simulator and race operations room in the industrial units close to its current base.

The team's modus operandi has been to out-source much of the construction of its chassis, but the plan for the new facility is to create a manufacturing centre of excellence to bring car build in-house. The ratio of personnel employed between the design office and manufacturing will be determined by the make-up of the 2021 regulations - which have yet to be finalised by the sport's governing body.

"Our new facility will be able to house the expansion we have planned of increasing staffing levels to around 600," Szafnauer tells F1 Racing. "We need everyone under one roof, we want to expand our manufacturing output, create a nice canteen, some office space, meeting rooms and a gym for our employees - everything we don't have at the moment. But we don't plan for it to be too opulent. We still need to retain our DNA and our racer's ethos, so it will be purpose-built for performance.

"There is no financial constraint on making the building help the performance of the car, but if you have gold taps and fancy wooden structures - that won't make the car go quicker. So there has to be a balance."

Canadian businessman Stroll took over the ailing team from previous owner Vijay Mallya after it was put into administration last summer and has started the process of investing heavily in the squad. At the Toronto Autoshow in February, a new title sponsor was unveiled and the team rebranded to SportPesa Racing Point F1 Team. The plans to upgrade its factory to a new 
state-of-the-art, sustainable building is an indication
 of Stroll's long-term commitment to Formula 1 and a
boost to the Motorsport Valley economy around Silverstone and in the UK - particularly in the present uncertain political landscape.

The purchase of more land will give Racing Point the option to futureproof its investment, taking into account unforeseen changes in the direction of Formula 1 regulations, as Szafnauer explains: "Let's say in the future windtunnels come back into vogue and the regulation says you can use them 24/7. In that scenario we wouldn't be able to share another team's tunnel [it currently rents time, along with other teams, at Toyota's windtunnel in Cologne]. What we would have to do then is build our own windtunnel. Or we might need a greater area for simulation or create a new CFD [Computational Fluid Dynamics] hub.

"We have the option to do all of these things, because we can expand with the land we have bought. Right now, we don't know where the sport is going in the future - but we're prepared for it."

A new regulatory, sporting and commercial regime is due to come into effect in 2021, but the details are still being negotiated by the principal stakeholders - F1, the FIA and the teams. Among the changes being sought are a budget cap and a more equitable distribution of income, which should offer a fairer playing field for the less opulently funded outfits. Like many of the midfield, that would offer Racing Point the best chance of taking regular podium finishes and even race wins.

Racing Point has been able to retain key personnel through the transition to new ownership, including technical director Andrew Green, chief race engineer Tom McCullough and sporting director Andy Stevenson - their efforts in the past few seasons have consistently put the team in the 'best of the rest' slot outside the top three, despite limited resources.

In both 2016 and 2017 it finished fourth in the constructors' standings, ahead of teams with much larger budgets. According to Szafnauer, any future regulations must favour a meritocracy and allow teams like Racing Point to flourish.

"There's a lot of talk about prescribed designs and single-supply parts, but what I would like to see for 2021 is a budget cap and technical freedoms underneath that cap," he says. "It would be easier to police if you have a single supplier for a gearbox or a driveshaft, but to me that's isn't the F1 of the future. A budget cap would help economics but with technical freedoms it means the smart guys can still outdo the not-so-smart guys."

Since it forfeited points scored before the buy-out, Racing Point slipped to seventh in the constructors' standings last year. That means despite the investment from the new Stroll-backed consortium, 2019 will be a consolidation year while the team reorganises its infrastructure. Slowly, money is reaching areas of the company that had been in need of attention for some time.

"We have a great driver-in-loop simulator," explains Szafnauer. "But we haven't had all 21 tracks - now with an influx of money we've been able to buy the circuits we've been missing. Everyone here is working on
 Medion laptops that are ten years old [Medion was a sponsor brought to Force India by former driver Adrian Sutil]. They haven't broken down but we haven't been able to afford new ones. When the consortium took
over, the priority was performance to make the car
go quicker, but now we're looking at updating all
 of our tooling and infrastructure."

Up to 95% of the 2019 car was designed and 40% manufactured before the takeover, so the team isn't expecting huge benefits immediately. But unlike in previous years, it can now afford more updates.

"A few years ago we had a B-spec car because we had to keep pushing back the upgrades because we couldn't afford them," concludes Szafnauer. "Updates to the car planned for Bahrain, Barcelona and Canada didn't materialise, so by the time we added them altogether - it was essentially a B-spec car. We will no longer have that problem, so we aim to be more competitive as the season develops."