Why misfortune has masked Racing Point's dark horse

Context, in Formula 1, is everything. In the previous two seasons, the Racing Point squad would have snatched a sixth-and-seventh result from your hand - but in the year 2020, the team will make the trudge from Austria to Hungary presumably disappointed.

In 2018, the Force India squad was close to hitting the wall before Lawrence Stroll's consortium of backers rescued the team, and it was still arguably suffering from that financial hangover in 2019 as development was severely stunted. In that context, being well among the points with both cars would have been lauded as a victory.

This year, the team has a seriously quick car on its hands. So quick, in fact, that Renault levelled a protest against the team after the Styrian Grand Prix following its double-points finish, alleging that its brake ducts were too similar to those designed by the Mercedes team.

Although testing served up a taster of what's to come from the car, with the drivers factoring among the front runners, the dinner service is arguably slightly late in arriving. Sergio Perez's latent speed in practice hasn't - yet - translated into five-star results, and although Racing Point would ordinarily be pleased to leave Austria with fourth in the constructors' standings and 22 points, a lot more was possible.

Qualifying for the Styrian GP was the real kick in the knackers. Perez and team-mate Lance Stroll found good laps difficult to come by in the deluge of rain that pervaded the Red Bull Ring, and both struggled to get Pirelli's wet compound tyres switched on in the gloom. To the surprise of many, Perez was unable to clear Q1 and started 17th, while Stroll was outqualified by Williams' George Russell en route to 13th, which became 12th with Charles Leclerc's grid penalty.

Their recoveries were, for the most part, excellent. Sunday was dry, and so the pink cars were immediately back in their element; after scything through the field to fifth, Perez was all over the back of Red Bull's Alex Albon before clunking into the Thai driver and breaking his front wing. Grabbing an armful of understeer in the downhill Turn 4 in his attempts to claim fourth, Perez almost 'did a Hamilton' and clipped Albon, who this time managed to hold position.

Perez's broken wing meant that he lost great chunks of pace, and he was pipped by Lando Norris at the final corner - only just hanging on to sixth as Stroll and Daniel Ricciardo looked to cash in their chips. Stroll had been hermetically sealed to Ricciardo's tail, but couldn't make his bid for freedom until very late on in the race.

In Autosport's Friday podcast, this writer had tipped Perez to factor in the fight for the podium after he'd topped FP1 on merit, but extenuating circumstances rather suggested that those comments had hexed him.

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Last weekend, Perez was in with a podium shout, but lost tyre life late on and was once more overhauled by Norris (and Carlos Sainz Jr) in the final throes of the race. Sunday's pace rather suggested that, if Racing Point hadn't been thrown a curveball by qualifying, Perez could have been in the hunt again.

After the Styrian Grand Prix, Stroll was effusive in his praise for the car, hinting that Racing Point could be a match for Red Bull on pure pace alone.

From midfielders plagued by financial misfortune to now laying claim to 'second or third-best' car, Racing Point has managed to turn its fortunes around

"I really believe today we had debatably the second quickest car, maybe third, but we were definitely quicker than than Renault, McLaren and a lot of other of our competitors," he said.

"So that was really positive. You know, it wasn't the the perfect race setting for both of us.

"I mean for Sergio starting 17th, [sixth] was a pretty good result. I think he probably would have signed up for that before the race. From my side there were definitely some frustrating parts of the race, being stuck behind Ricciardo, but the pace was there the whole race and that's what's really promising going forward."

From midfielders plagued by financial misfortune to now laying claim to 'second or third-best' car, Racing Point has managed to turn its fortunes around. But how?

Sure, maybe the answer's an obvious one - and there's still plenty of people venturing into the world of "Pink Mercedes" pejoratives. Even McLaren principal Andreas Seidl indulged in them on Friday, suggesting that his team couldn't match "last year's Mercedes" after Perez's practice pace. But in truth, it does the team a big disservice.

One cannot simply copy a design and expect it to work - it takes a lot of time to understand a concept's intricacies and even more time to implement them and extract the full potential.

Sure, the RP20's emergence from the Barcelona garages turned heads. Renault's protest alleged that Racing Point had not created a car which it had fully designed, even though the likes of Haas has been running with Ferrari hardware for years and courted less outward controversy - although that's been dulled somewhat in recent seasons. If anything, it's a surprise that a strongly Mercedes-influenced design hasn't been done earlier, although Renault's protest suggests that the French manufacturer suspects the team is pushing its similarities too far.

There's a key reason why Racing Point decided to make a go of the W10-inspired design, and that's down to the Mercedes power unit packaging. For the past couple of seasons, Racing Point has attempted to use a Red Bull-style aero philosophy with a powertrain that hasn't exactly been designed for it. Mercedes historically runs with very low rake compared to Red Bull, which likes to incline its car more dramatically to maximise the space under the diffuser.

But when the position of gearbox and other internals doesn't lend itself to that aerodynamic philosophy, engineers tend to compromise a bit. To that end, the centre of gravity may end up being higher, which makes the car altogether more difficult to control.

By bringing that down, and placing the powertrain in a position it was meant to be, Racing Point has managed to iron that out and create a car that's simply much more pleasant to drive. It's also tacked on downforce with other Mercedes-influenced aero tweaks, creating a package which is much more harmonious than the square-peg-in-round-hole RP19 that was nothing more than a midfielder last year.

Understanding those quirks of the powertrain construction and conducting its research into the Mercedes philosophy has helped Racing Point build a much stronger car this year. The recruitment drive and greater resources allowed by the more stable financial footing has ensured that the factory can cope with designing, building and running more advanced parts too.

The team is still learning to grapple with the change in design ethos, and Perez said as much following the Styrian race.

"I think we did a pretty good step from last weekend to this one," he said. "Obviously the car is pretty new in a lot of areas. We changed the concept totally. So we're learning from it. And there is good understanding from it and we are already looking forward massively to Hungary."

Perez was, however, bemused by the lack of pace in the car in the wet, calling it "a big surprise".

"We were so competitive in the dry, and normally we should be a lot better," he said.

The car is unmistakeably quick now and it seems only a matter of time before it will claim the results it's surely capable of

Perhaps that's another legacy of running a new, unfamiliar design concept, but given the scarcity of wet races it's not entirely worth thinking about it too much, especially given the summer bias of 2020's championship. Regardless, without being tied to the lower reaches of the grid, the case for a Racing Point podium doesn't seem at all far-fetched.

The design was set to be a bit of a gamble - Racing Point's big cheeses admitted as much earlier in the year - for a one-off season, but thanks to the coronavirus-enforced delay to the overhauled technical regulations the concept will last another year.

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The car is unmistakeably quick now, and it seems only a matter of time before it will claim the results it's surely capable of, but the next challenge for the team is keeping it competitive for an extra season.

Under the technical guidance of Andy Green, Racing Point has certainly drawn on many visible elements from Mercedes' style, but has turned it into something that the team can work with of its own accord. In its mission to be the best team, it has done something that F1 teams are often too proud to do: learn from them.