Like the tide rolling in and out on the beach, the debate over F1 teams' reliance on each other comes and goes, but the principle is always the same. What truly defines an F1 team? Should we allow teams to share parts or should everything be made in-house? Here's a look at one of the sport's hottest topics, as it picks up steam once again...
What's all the fuss about?
The fuss is all about the working relationship between F1 teams, often referred to as "sister teams" or "A-B teams." In short, while F1 is unique and known for having each team build their own car, there are in fact a number of parts which can be purchased from another team, rather than built in-house. Besides the power units, this includes things like the gearbox, suspension components, hydraulics, and others. The advantage of doing this is that it allows the purchasing team to concentrate more on other aspects of the car; typically aerodynamic development. The disadvantage is obviously that you don't have complete control over every aspect of your car design. At the moment, the most prominent A-B teams are Ferrari/Haas and Red Bull/AlphaTauri, although other teams such as Aston Martin and Williams also purchase some components from Mercedes as well.
The new angle of the problem is that, with the emergence of the cost cap, some teams have effectively loaned staff from their main team to the "second" outfit. Obviously these people have a very good knowledge and understanding of how the main team works, or even certain aspects of its car design. At the moment, there are two teams who currently do not have any "partners" with which to share components: McLaren and Alpine. Obviously McLaren takes the power unit from Mercedes, but that's it, and Alpine is completely alone on all fronts. Alfa Romeo is moving closer to the McLaren model, although it does still purchase a very limited number of parts from Ferrari.
It's no surprise, then, that McLaren and Alpine are the most vocal about the possibility of shared development knowledge and resources across teams, and want a significant reduction or even elimination of the available shared parts, as well as tighter staff restrictions.
Is this a new thing?
No. This debate has gone on for many years, ranging from parts sharing to outright customer cars. Now, up until the 1980s, teams could just run customer cars which they purchased from another manufacturer. This is how Williams started, for example, by running a customer March car until building its own car a few years later. After that, restrictions were tightened to "preserve the DNA of F1" as a manufacturer's championship. That's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, to the point where it doesn't really mean anything to me. If we really take the "DNA" from the origin of the sport, there should be no problem with outright customer cars, then. If you just select a certain era of F1 as a template for your "DNA," then that's really just editing history to fit your narrative. There's no right answer, so what's the point?
The modern roots of customer teams probably begin with the creation of Toro Rosso in 2006, as a supplement to Red Bull. While its first car was a carryover of the inherited Minardi chassis of the team's previous guise, from 2007-2009, the Toro Rosso STR2, STR3, and STR4 were essentially Ferrari-engined versions of the Red Bull, designed by technical maestro Adrian Newey. However, the car was not optimized around the Ferrari engine, and so it was frequently slightly slower than the parent squad. The unique issue with this arrangement is that the teams have a common ownership, making the question of shared resources very awkward. Nevertheless, from 2010 Toro Rosso was made to be more independent of Red Bull so as to prevent too much of a collaboration.
Around the same time McLaren agreed, in what was a controversial decision (at the time), to a technical alliance with the newly-named Force India team from 2009 onwards. This allowed Force India to focus primarily on aero development, and build itself into a respectable midfield force from 2009-2013, when it then switched to a Mercedes alliance as McLaren lost its status as Mercedes's main team after the Silver Arrows arrived in 2010. All of the new-for-2010 teams (all of which have sadly folded since) shortly followed suit in finding a partner team, in hopes of making the same competitive jump as Force India did. Shockingly, none of them did, and by the end of 2016 they were all gone.
The real catalyst which reignited the debate on customer cars and collaboration came with the arrival of Haas in 2016. From the outset, the team was determined to use as many available parts from an existing team, in order to minimize costs. They partnered with Ferrari, which was somewhat risky, because at the time (2014) the Scuderia was having one of its worst seasons in almost 2 decades. However, the team burst onto the scene with consecutive top-six finishes, and although their form did tail off over the year, they showed they could in fact hold their own. 2017 provided another relative, albeit small, step forward, but 2018 proved to be the real head-turner.
With a car that had clearly taken some cues from the successful and innovative 2017 Ferrari, the team rocked up with the fourth-best car, and would have likely finished fourth in the team's championship if they had better execution (see 2018 Australian GP, for instance). Now, the Haas VF-18 was, in my opinion, different enough and innovative enough in its own right that it didn't deserve to be called a "Ferrari copy." But that's what people said, notably Renault, McLaren, Force India, and Williams, all teams that were slower than Haas on pace (Renault is debatable). Even Red Bull chimed in when Haas got a little too close for comfort at the Austrian Grand Prix (where they split the Red Bulls in qualifying).
Image from formulapassion.it
In my view, the 2020 car was the closest "copy" of any of Haas's cars (to the 2019 Ferrari SF90), yet it was so far off the pace (thanks to the infamous not-legal-not-illegal 2019 engine revisions) that fanfare died down significantly, despite the same relationship as before. Besides, there was another car stealing the limelight for its resemblance to another team, in the form of the famous "Pink Mercedes" Racing Point RP20. Which, it should be noted, is the only car to actually have been deemed to have run illegally-sourced parts since this whole row reignited in 2016.
The takeaway here is that it's nothing new to F1, both in the distant past or in the recent past, and any new flare-ups are mostly down to the relative performance of the so-called "B-teams" compared to their rivals. After a quiet few years, Haas rocks up in 2022 with back-to-back points finishes to start the year, and surprise! Here we are again...
What does the future hold?
Well, in my view, I don't think much should change to be honest. Teams are still responsible for their own aerodynamic development, which is still the primary performance differentiator in this sport. Plus, at the end of the day, this is a business, and an expensive one at that. Forcing Haas or AlphaTauri to do everything in house would require a budget which they simply don't have, and so the teams would seriously struggle to exist, or at least run competitively. In my view, the "DNA" and "spirit of the regulations" arguments are out the window, because as I've already said, this has been going on for a long time, and used to be even worse.
Plus, what are the teams so afraid of? If they have competent people working on their car, they should always come out on top. Are they not sure about their own abilities? If so, why is that other teams' problems? Look at other racing series which have had the customer car model, or even a spec series. Take NASCAR, for example. Up until 2021, the teams built their own cars, and there were always the same familiar faces at the front: Penske, Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing. 2022 arrives; new car, same parts for everyone, and yet we still have Penske, Hendrick Motorsports, and Joe Gibbs Racing winning the majority of races. Good people will still, at the end of the day, make a huge difference. Indycar is the same way; the basic chassis has been the same more or less since 2012, and exactly the same for three years, and yet it's still Penske and Ganassi winning races.
My point is, if you have quality people who can optimize the design and setup of a race car, you will be competitive. The cost cap is helping to even the playing field. The aerodynamic testing restrictions (on wind tunnel time and CFD) are helping to even the playing field. Alfa Romeo has said that it soon might be more cost-effective to design things in-house anyways, so the whole issue becomes self-policing. So, McLaren, Alpine, and the others who might oppose (now or in the future) the "customer team" model, either you can keep pointing fingers and accusing others of misconduct, or you can look in the mirror and find out the real reason why you're behind them on track.
And who knows? Maybe if you get things right, someone will come knocking on your door looking for a supply deal. Then we'll see how you really feel...
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