Opinion: Racing Point not punished enough after points deduction and fine

Racing Point have been deducted 15 constructors’ championship points and fined £361,000 after Renault were successful in their protest over the team’s 2020 car.

Renault made protests at the Styrian, Hungarian and British Grand Prix over the Racing Point brake ducts. The loss of points and the fine has come from the Styrian race with reprimands for the Hungarian and British rounds.

Crucially, Racing Point do not have to make changes to their brake ducts and can continue using them with the only punishment being a reprimand.

Reprimands for a technical breach do not do anything. You can pick up as many reprimands as you want for a technicality and not get a further punishment.

Its an incredibly lucky escape and sets a very dangerous precedent for Formula 1.

In the FIA statement it says this: “The Stewards acknowledge that since the RBD’s (rear brake ducts) are compliant with the 2020 FIA F1 technical regulations it is not realistic to expect Racing Point to re-design or re-engineer the BD’s (brake ducts) in a way that would effectively require them to unlearn what they already know. 

“Therefore, the penalty imposed is intended to penalize the potential advantage Racing Point may have accrued in the BD (brake duct) design process which resulted in the use of LPs (listed parts) which were not designed by it.”

Essentially the punishment is severe enough to cover the whole season according to the stewards. The points loss can be made up with one race so to get hurt for one grand prix even though you are carrying an advantage for up to 18 races is more than worth it.

Also, the £361,000 fine might sound like a lot but for context it is 10% of the money you get for moving up a spot in the constructors’ championship.

Its worth cheating or breaking the rules it seems. Look at the Ferrari saga with their power unit, all those wins and pole positions they had in 2018 and 2019 are questionable yet they were allowed to keep them despite them almost certainly cheating is not on.

That plus what has happened with Racing Point is poor from the FIA. Things might get out of control now because they have not handed out tougher penalties.

Another interesting point is that the 2020 sporting regulations came into force from 1 January 2020 meaning that brake ducts were a listed part so you cannot copy or gain information from them after 1 January.

Mercedes sold or gave the designs of their 2019 brake ducts to Racing Point on 6 January 2020, another breach. However, the stewards said that this was a breach but not significant or “worthy of censure.”

It is silly and very risky for Mercedes to give information away after the new rules were enforced yet this has not been penalised either. Make of that what you will.

Point 14 section d in the image above is just quite incredible and for all the wrong reasons. It is basically saying Racing Point could have got information from photographs, except they needed more resources to reverse engineer them.

The FIA is now allowing that you can sell listed parts to competitors, but neither party will receive a penalty for that ‘if the listed parts are not used’ and ‘if the competitive advantage could have been largely obtained by reverse engineering those parts based on photos. Just remarkable.

We will see what happens but I find this ruling extremely lenient and will be surprised if Racing Point protest it because they will be happy that the punishment is so light.

There is also a case for Mercedes as they sold listed parts in 2020 which is not allowed. Renault will not be happy with this and rightly so because the FIA have made a complete mess of this, just like they did with Ferrari earlier this year.