Fulcrum wrote: ↑03 Jul 2020, 18:21
Depends how it was "copied". If there has been sharing of intellectual property then teams might have reason to feel aggrieved.
If, as has been suggested, Racing Point reverse engineered the Mercedes aerodynamics via photogrammetry (or similar techniques), then the complaints are pure sour grapes. Its actually quite a feat, and it was not without significant risk.
And I doubt its a copy in the sense you are referring to. There will be minute differences specific to Racing Point's interpretation of the Mercedes solution, and the configuration of their internals (radiators, etc...).
Anyone can look at the Mona Lisa. Very few could repaint it.
Of course there are stuff that they had to do on their own. Even if they have a "secret collaboration" with Mercedes and they got classified information on the car (extremely unlikely), they would be foolish to completely copy everything as it would raise way too much suspicion (it already has as it is).
The thing is, the stuff they haven't copied are "uncopiable". Teams try to keep things like internal packaging and PU integration very secret since there might be a lot of time in the table in that area. Mercedes pretty much admitted that they took a lot of inspiration for (either 2018 or 2019) car from Ferrari after seeing them open up the sidepod on the grid trying to fix a problem in Raikkonen's car if I am not mistaken.
As for the risks involved, I would say the only risk here was them not getting something right because the concept was proven. And really, it isn't too impressive to copy a car outer's surface with the technology available today. I mean there are free software online that have been trained to extract a 3D model from a 2D picture. I would imagine that a Formula 1 team has much more resources available than that. Not to mention actual engineers who understand to some degree what they are looking at.
As soon as they got a somewhat accurate 3D model representation of the 2019 Mercedes, they could build a Wind Tunnel model and test if it was going to work right out of the box, or they had to actually had to work to make it competitive. At that point, they could have either been lucky, and the model proved successful right away, or if it didn't show the expected result, they decided to risk it and try to understand the concept better to make it work.
That's the only risky decision they could have taken. And it was optional to a certain extent because if the car didn't work as planned, they could have just gone back to their own concept and try to improve that instead (which is more work yeah, but that's what every other team did over the winter).
And now getting to your final point about Mona Lisa. If they had an aerodynamically promising model of the 2019 Mercedes, then they had to think about the compromises they had to make to the chassis to fit the engine. Why? Because there are no images available of how Mercedes has put everything together in their car so they had to come up with their own way. Plus there's also possible structural changes with the new iteration of the power unit (from 2019 to 2020)
And if you look to compare the 2019 Mercedes with the 2020 RP, the Front of the car is nearly identical. Very very minor differences in the flap configuration of the front wing, but that's probably some track specific stuff that RP has put together on their own. If you look at the rear of those cars though, it's a different story. They tried to copy the airbox configuration and they probably succeeded there to some extent, but they were unable to pack things as tightly as Mercedes and as a result the sidepod configuration is a little different.
But that's fine and you know why? Because they don't need the actual Mona Lisa. A good enough replica will be enough to get them through this season with an advantage in resources for the upcoming regulation changes.
