It is THE surprise of the first day of testing in Barcelona: the Racing Point Mercedes RP20. And not just because it performed the 3rd fastest time. Sergio Perez ended up just 0.601 seconds behind Lewis Hamilton, the day’s fastest.
The pink racer runs like clockwork. More importantly, it could be the twin of last year’s Mercedes!
Racing Point drove a completely different car out of the garage today than it‘s presented to main sponsor BWT in Mondsee last Monday. Striking: the nose, front wing, airbox, and even the rear wing are similar to the current Mercedes, the side boxes resemble the silver arrow from last year.
Less supporting voices even call it the RP20 a 1: 1 copy of the W10. It’s actually logical, after all, the RP20 was developed in Brackley in the Mercedes wind tunnel. And Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff and Racing Point owner Lawrence Stroll are close friends. It’s not for nothing that a Mercedes hybrid roars in the rear of the pink racer.
F1-insider.com also learned: Lawrence Stroll is so disappointed with the 2019 results that he ordered his engineers to build a completely new car. It’s only logical he looked at the best car for inspiration.
Chief Technology Officer Green justifies: “Should we look at a worse car? It is logical that we take the world champion. But we built our car on our own and didn’t let Mercedes help us. ”
A statement with which he alludes to Haas, who obtain a large part of the “free” parts from Ferrari. At any rate, Haas‘s also inspired by its big brother. The US racer is half a Ferrari. Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko (76) to F1-insider.com: “We are keeping out of it. But McLaren and Renault will manifest their opinion on this. It will be interesting to follow the events going forward… ”
Sergio Perez doesn’t care about the discussions. He’s satisfied with the first day of testing: “We have a very good basis with room for improvement.”
