The 'life rescue' paying off for F1's punching team

Racing Point is fifth in the 2019 Formula 1 constructors' championship. With four races run, that's a better placing than the team had anticipated. And for an outfit that came within weeks - perhaps even days - of financial implosion last summer, that's an impressive achievement.

New owner Lawrence Stroll may have started pumping funds in back in August when he took over, but by then the design of Racing Point's 2019 contender was already well under way. Given the possibility of a cash crisis, compromises had to be made at that early stage. These had been built into the concept when the money began to arrive, so the team knew that it would start this season with a package that wasn't optimal.

"They commenced designing the car for this year in April last year, when the team was probably at the height of its financial difficulties," says Stroll Sr.

"Understandably the guys were focused on the 2018 car, because they didn't know what 2019 held. They certainly didn't have excess funds to be focusing on 2019, they had to make parts for 2018. So we anticipated at the beginning that the first four races would be a little more difficult quite honestly than they have been. Our expectations were lower."

"It's just the boost we wanted," says technical director Andy Green of Racing Point's early season form. "To finish the first four races with the points we've got and the championship position we've got, it's one of our best starts.

"But we also see how tight it is - it's never been this tight before. It could go any way. It's going to be a long and hard season."

But this time, the former Force India outfit is not fighting with one hand tied behind its back. In recent years, lack of funding often meant new parts that would have brought performance were delayed getting to the car, or didn't make it at all.

"That's how the team has lived," says Green. "We've become very good at compiling updates and putting them on the car two or three times a season, if we're lucky. Last year we probably had one [update package].

"But it's all changed now, and our focus is on having the fastest car possible at each grand prix and getting the parts from the tunnel and into full-size and onto the track as quickly as possible, which is something that we haven't been able to do."

Like its rivals, Racing Point has updates coming for Barcelona this weekend, and this is a major package including front aero and suspension. After Spain, new parts will be coming through all the time - something that wasn't always the case before.

Having parts flow through the system without compromises is a big change for everyone at Racing Point

"There will be constant upgrades, we're now going to be like a normal team," says Stroll. "When we find something that works, we will be manufacturing it as fast as we can - probably not as fast as the big guys, but as fast as we are capable of - and bringing it to the car. So, Barcelona is for us a substantial step."

This capacity to follow a constant flow of development comes as a huge relief for all involved.

"To know that you've found improvements both in the tunnel and CFD but you can't get them to the car is frustrating," says team principal Otmar Szafnauer. "Now we can get them to the car. That's normal, that's what I've been used to, except in the last few years at Force India.

"One year we only ran two days of testing. And that wasn't that long ago. That was because of a lack of car parts - we couldn't pay the suppliers, and they didn't supply.

"Another year we ran a hybrid of the new car and the previous year's bits in testing. Which is why you would see huge swings of performance in our season. Capital expenditure was compromised every year, so IT infrastructure was compromised every year and we were not getting CFD upgrades when everybody else was."

But managing the team's current expansion - including creating the new factory illustrated above - with extra funding is almost as difficult as dealing with a lack of cash, albeit a less stressful challenge to have. Many current Racing Point people were around in the early 2000s when a Jordan team flush with Benson and Hedges cash grew too rapidly and lost focus as a result.

"It's more than just money," Szafnauer notes. "You've got to be careful that you don't waste your time. It's about human resources. You've still got to focus on the best thing to do with 425 people. We're still the same amount of people that we were, maybe 20 more, but not many.

"We can't lose some of that stuff, the punching above our weight and the efficiency that's been realised over the past few years. That all comes down to the decision making and the type of people that we hire. We've got to make sure the people we do hire are like-minded, and I'll help drive the efficiency [focus] home with making good decisions on the money we spend."

Now having parts flow through the system without compromises is a big change for everyone in the team.

"We're still adjusting, it's really tricky," says Green. "It puts a lot of pressure on the factory and production and the design office. It's all hard, the amount of work has gone up exponentially this year. We haven't increased our staff much at the moment, it is a big strain and we're asking a lot of everyone at the factory. But they are all rising to the challenge.

"We're still trying to keep it lean and efficient, just trying to up the level of performance. That's the directive from the new owners, who want to be closer to the top three. And to do that, this is what you need to do."

The key for Racing Point will be to not get too carried away with bringing parts through to the car just because it now can - every new piece has to earn its place in terms of cost and performance gain.

The old Force India team was caught out in the past because its windtunnel model was usually significantly more advanced than the car that was actually being raced, simply because of the lag in getting the parts being designed and developed onto the car. But there will be more correlation between the two, which is the case with the major teams.

But that in turn creates new challenges. Because the real car is changing more often, the team won't always have current data on how it performs on track in that spec.

"We're relying more on our pre-race simulations, which is why we've invested also in our simulator programme," says Green. "So that has ramped up massively over the past six months."

"The messages I get back, everybody couldn't be happier. Their lives were rescued - more than their jobs" Lawrence Stroll

The recent Netflix Drive to Survive documentary series gave an intriguing glimpse of just how tricky things became at Force India last summer, with one scene showing Szafnauer and the administrator gathering the factory staff together and promising them that they would be paid and that salvation was on the way. Everybody kept the faith and it paid off.

"People haven't left us," says Szafnauer. "And I think they've been rewarded for their loyalty - we are on a much greater and [more] stable financial footing. Now they're maybe able to reap the benefits of not having to worry about money, but worry about performance. That should see us do better on track."

Stroll is well aware that in buying the team he didn't just keep two cars on the grid, he also protected the jobs of over 400 people.

"The messages I get back, everybody couldn't be happier," he says. "Their lives were rescued - more than their jobs. There's families and mortgages and schools and doctors and dentists to pay for. So I think it was nothing short of a life rescue for them.

"It's a double whammy. To have that burden lifted, and that certainty personally, as well as professionally, to have a reasonable budget - people know we can develop a proper car and fight for the top of the midfield."

Stroll has quickly earned the respect of everyone in the Racing Point camp, and it's been suggested that he's an inspiring leader who makes things happen at the team.

"He's a great guy, very enthusiastic and he loves racing," says Szafnauer. "I can see how he became successful in the fashion business. He pays attention to detail, he's got a great memory, great energy.

"Once he's got a focus on what he wants to do, he keeps driving towards it. He wants us to become one of the great F1 teams and he'll keep driving us towards that ultimate goal. As will I."

Successful entrepreneurs are usually good delegators, and Stroll trusts the management at the team's Silverstone base to tell him what's needed.

"Occasionally he'll ask 'why?', or for us to explain," Szafnauer notes. "And if we have good, logical reasons, it's 'absolutely'.

"In Barcelona we'll have a new motorhome, to the Lawrence Stroll spec. So every detail of that motorhome, he's had an input. And he also wanted us, for the engineers and the drivers, to have new race trucks. He was really pushing us.

"And we said we've got a lot on, let's not lose focus of that car on track because we're doing a new motorhome, new race trucks, new garage - new everything at once. So let's push that back. I could tell it pained him, because he wanted new trucks too.

"But eventually he agreed with us and said, 'You're right, let's not do everything at once, let's get this done with the resources that we have, so we don't take our eye off the ball, which is the car on track'. So he made that compromise. The race trucks will stay like they are for a couple of years and we'll upgrade those in due course."

It's clear that Stroll has big ambitions - his bold plans for the new factory attest to that. But with the likes of McLaren and Alfa Romeo clearly gaining momentum and Renault and Haas pushing hard, securing fourth place in 2019 will not be easy.

"There's no question that the competition this year is much, much stronger than it was last year," says Stroll. "It's a couple of tenths from seventh to 18th - it certainly wasn't like that last year or the year before. But our goal is to try to be fourth, that's what we're aiming and pushing for and hopefully we'll achieve it."

Will the Spanish Grand Prix upgrade package be the first concrete sign of what Stroll's investment has brought to Racing Point?

"To be honest, the real start will be 2020," he says. "We're very shortly going to start on the 2020 car, which is a clean sheet of paper. This year will always have to be a bit of a compromise versus the original design of the car. We're not redesigning the whole car for 2019, we're working with what we have and bringing upgrades.

"Next year is whole new car. I think it's fair to say that will be the first Racing Point design from scratch, knowing our destiny and future."