Why F1 has always been a "copying championship"

There are two things that Formula 1 fans have learned about McLaren principal Andreas Seidl over the past few months.

Firstly, the ex-Porsche World Endurance Championship boss runs a very tight ship - taking the helm of an upwardly mobile McLaren and keeping it at the front of a hotly-contested midfield pack. But secondly, one that's become apparent in recent weeks, is that he loves having a dig at the other teams.

And by other teams, we mean Racing Point. Having been unwavering in his commitment to call the RP20 "last year's Mercedes" last weekend, he arrived for the Hungarian Grand Prix and proceeded to stick the boot in further as the Silverstone squad faces Renault's protest over allegedly copied brake ducts.

"This protest is another key element on making some clarifications, on the FIA and Formula 1 side of what they want Formula 1 to be in the future," Seidl said. "Do they want that Formula 1 is ending up in a copying championship? In a championship where you end up with two or three constructors or manufacturers, and we simply have more cars of one manufacturer or constructor on-track?"

His premonition of F1 becoming a "copying championship" is a strange one, and it's odd to see it cropping up now as if copying in F1 was ever anything new. Throw a dart at any point of F1's rich tapestry and you'll find someone, somewhere, who copied another aspect of a rival's design - arguably, that's why the championship is able to progress technically as engineers take ideas and move them on.

Now, let's leave aside the allegations that Racing Point physically took Mercedes' designs and reproduced them line-for-line - because at this stage, that's conjecture. Plus, given Racing Point's apparent blessing from the FIA on its designs, you'd expect the team to box a little more clever than that.

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

We're focusing on the "copying championship" line here, especially as there's myriad examples of F1 teams who have copied their counterparts - some with more success than others. Hopefully, this feature will build enough of a case to illustrate that the idea of mimicking someone else's handiwork is part and parcel of F1's history.

When Colin Chapman first unveiled the Lotus 72 in 1970, its low-slung wedge shape with boxy sidepods drew more than just sideways glances as F1's era of cigar-shaped, front-radiatored chariots was set to come to an end. McLaren then went and made its own version for 1973, although arguably its 1971 M16 Indycar design bore the largest hallmarks to the ground-breaking Lotus design - also plonking the radiators to the sides of the car and opting for the squarer bodywork.

Lotus also had to watch as its ground-effects were copied by all and sundry on the grid; the Lotus 78 brought the revolutionary aero concept with it to the grid in 1977, which lent itself to numerous copies in the succeeding years. Williams' FW07 from 1979 looks awfully similar to the subsequent Lotus 79, but such claims of copying were probably left by the wayside as Patrick Head's design team simply executed the ground-effect layout to greater success than Chapman's team could.

Although the 1995 Ligier's reception in testing was no less controversial than when the RP20 first appeared on track at Barcelona, there was no public protest against the car - presumably because it was not among the Benettons and Williams' on a regular basis

Further to that, 1979's field was littered with Lotus 79 clones - Tyrrell's 009 and Ligier's JS11 look, at a glance, very similar to the 79 in concept and shape, and we're also willing to put the McLaren M29 in that category too. There was also the Kauhsen WK, piloted by future European Touring Car star Gianfranco Brancatelli (below), but given that only managed to DNQ twice it was an ineffective copy at best.

Although Formula 1 was a much looser paddock back then, less beholden to regulations dictating the design of its cars, there were still cases in which copied designs were penalised and outlawed by the governing body. Take the case of the Arrows FA1, a car thrown together at the last minute for the 1978 season.

Arrows, put together by a last-minute exodus of the Shadow team, had bagged a place on the entry list (again, at a time where entries were less stringently monitored) at relatively short notice. Penned by designer Tony Southgate, the gold-liveried Arrows was immediately vilified by the Shadow team as it looked to be an absolute facsimile of its own DN9 - which Southgate had also designed.

Shadow moved to get the car outlawed, and Arrows' case was based on Southgate having been a contractor and thus the intellectual property, it asserted, belonged to him. Not that the London High Court saw it that way.

According to the verdict, around 70% of the DN9's designs could be found in the FA1, as Southgate had opted for many of the same assemblies within. Shadow won the case, forcing Arrows to get its later A1 chassis into production; thankfully for Southgate, the length of the legal proceedings meant that he could have a back-up design ready to go.

I'm sure there's doubt over the examples provided, and that copying the abstract noun of a design concept is a lot more spurious than a case of looking at a design and attempting to replicate it line-for-line. So let's delve into more modern times, where F1 has played host to numerous chassis that bear more than a resemblance to other cars on the grid.

Let's look at 1995. The Benetton B195, powered by Renault's all-new three-litre V10, was the class of the field - and so it was seldom seen on the race course next to that year's Ligier JS41. But, when viewed side-by-side, they look exactly the same. The contours of the nose are the same. The sidepods, at the rear edge, sweep down in the same manner. The early-season models had the same outlet on the engine cover.

At the time, Ligier was owned by Flavio Briatore - also the team principal at Benetton - and there were more than passing rumours that the team had transferred the designs of the B195 over. The key differences were under the hood, in which Ligier had the Mugen-Honda engine installed.

And although the JS41's reception in testing was no less controversial than when the RP20 first appeared on track at Barcelona, there was no public protest against the car - presumably because it was not among the Benettons and Williams' on a regular basis. Perhaps, the fact that Racing Point has many of the non-listed components that Mercedes has sold to the team, the waters begin to muddy.

Arguably the most pertinent example of alleged copying involved Sauber's C23 car from 2004, which was purportedly a direct copy of Ferrari's F2003-GA. As Sauber's relationship with Ferrari increased at the turn of the millennium, which included being allowed to test frequently at Fiorano and Mugello, its cars also began to slowly morph into looking visually similar.

Numerous teams had been accused of copying Ferrari's previous car, the F2002, and Toyota designer Angelo Santini was even questioned by German police as part of an espionage enquiry - but was never charged.

The Scuderia's 2003 car brought the sculpted sidepods into common design discourse in F1. Sauber's "Blue Ferrari" of 2004 had drawn on many of the F2003-GA's design hallmarks, and then-Jaguar head honcho Tony Purnell questioned Sauber on infringing on Ferrari's intellectual property rights.

The key sticking points were in the Sauber team's sudden switch from its twin-keeled suspension to a Ferrari-style single-keel, along with a decidedly similar front wing layout to its red-liveried counterpart.

Arguably, the undercut sidepods were always going to filter down to the rest of the grid, but the front suspension layout was something Sauber had pioneered over the previous few years and helped it to take fourth in the constructors' championship in 2001.

The idea of customer cars has always been a contentious one in F1, but their presence in the first 30 years of the championship immediately scotches any assertions that they're not 'part of F1's DNA'

PLUS: The twin-keel car that took Sauber to new heights

But, soon after, the FIA provided a clarification that there was no compelling evidence that the '04 Sauber was a direct copy of the previous year's Ferrari, and any further complaints were presumably shelved as a result.

The idea of customer cars has always been a contentious one in F1, but their presence in the first 30 years of the championship immediately scotches any assertions that they're not 'part of F1's DNA'. As recently as 2009, Toro Rosso ran virtually the same basic architecture as parent team Red Bull, albeit with a different engine and a few detail differences.

Although the door was firmly slammed on customer cars after that, doing the next best thing of taking non-listed components and building a car around that inevitably leads to a similar design to the original car.

Arguably, it's Racing Point's competitiveness that has drawn the ire of Renault, McLaren et al. Whether Renault can prove the brake ducts of the RP20 are stripped directly off the W10 is one matter, and one for an intellectual property specialist.

But the suggestion, if Renault's case holds no water, that this opens the door to F1 becoming a "copying championship" is ultimately false - because F1 has always been one.