We propose an exercise. Choose the circuit that you like the most and imagine that under it there is another, underground, where the same teams run but with cars driven by the team managers. It won’t be necessary to use a lot of ingenuity because it’s just what happens… even if you don’t see it.
In the Formula 1 Outside the asphalt many more things happen than on it. There are business, political, media or advertising interests, and above all there is a war to overcome those in front. In this war, the ammunition is diverse and applicable in several planes. As a result of the back and forth between Mercedes and Red Bull, the last play of all, is that of an investigation opened by the Milton-Keynes team management to settle responsibilities about what may be a case of espionage.
To address this, it is necessary to go back to the middle of the 2021 season. The battle between Mercedes and Red Bull was red hot, and it was fought right up until turn six of the last race of the year. The result left bitter headlines and some image of those responsible with a frown, discomposed gesture and sour headlines. It happens that what tends to happen under the table was subtly glimpsed, and the volleys that were spankedChristian Horner and Toto Wolff they were comparable to that of two galleons facing each other, shooting each other until they ran out of gunpowder. But this was what was seen, what was palpable. It is not very well known who threw the first bang, but it is well known that many Mercedes technicians, especially engine technicians, paraded towards that rare and undefined Red Bull thing that took over the Honda engines without the Japanese leaving the scene. scene.
Toto was stung by the biggest thing that they stole from his people, and his next move was somewhat more Machiavellian
The blue ones pilfered a good handful of medium charges from the silver arrows, although the direct consequence on the RB thrusters is not yet fully visible. In a logical and very typical development of the Orientals, their engines have been growing little by little, and if they started from those disastrous engines of 2015, this year they have been five out of seven races greeting the rest from the top of the podium. Newcomers have had little to do that they are now as they are, and it is believed that their presence will affect what is to come more than what is present. Where its absence has been appreciated is in Brixworth.
The place where the best engines of the last decade have been built are suffering, not only because they stopped seeing the Silver Arrows win, but because they catch podiums only accidentally; three out of fourteen possible. So there are no poles or wins to celebrate, and performance bonuses won’t cheer Brackley employees up. Similarly, its clients have suffered a similar deficit. If McLaren still holds the flag with some dignity, Aston Martin is having such a weak year that its owner has already threatened to sell the team several times, and Williams continues to close the grid with no more visible horizon than to follow the red lantern. They are so tight in Mercedes that Wolff has already said that they are considering the possibility of stopping equipping three clients, so that they become two, presumably Aston Martin – Mercedes’ business partners – and McLaren, a leading team and always to be taken into account. It is highly likely that Williams will have to partner with Honda or Renault.
Knowing this, everything indicates that Toto was stung by the biggest thing that was stolen from his people, and his next move was somewhat more Machiavellian. Wolff and Stroll Sr. are friends, or at least close. There is the business line, the sports line, the motor line… there are different ways of approaching it. In one of those talks that are usually thrown in the shanty-trailers that both take to European circuits, the Austrian must have passed the Canadian a list of Red Bull signings as a subterfuge response. Aston Martin torpedoed Red Bull’s waterline, through whose door people were parading in the direction of Silverstone. Now when someone sees similarities between the blue cars and those driven by Lance and Sebas Vettel they say “they look alike”. Because they look alike, and it is logical that it be so. It’s not about espionage, it’s about something much simpler.
The Formula 1 teams are high-tech aeronautical companies whose shelves hold hundreds of industrial secrets. That they fall into the hands of the competition can seriously affect their interests and that is why they fight to cover the cracks through which their recipes can escape. Computers do not have USB ports, when an attached email is sent, a personal password must be entered that identifies the sender and receiver, and no one doubts in the least that outgoing messages are read by a kind of internal Gestapo, at least random way. Christian Horner has bought a detective’s magnifying glass to investigate if this could constitute a crime, at least behind closed doors… but it doesn’t matter. Well, he doesn’t care because he doesn’t want to see how Adrian Newey’s designs end up where they shouldn’t, but it’s not going to change much and the reason is the following.
When an engineer walks out the door of a team, an unavoidable labor-legal process has already taken place. The fugitive must give notice with very clear deadlines that are usually specified in their contract and depend on their level of access to information and height of the position. If, say, John Smith leaves a powerful team on New Year’s Eve, three months in advance he has to warn the company with the so-called “Notice.” If John Smith is a senior engineer, that’s six months. If it’s ‘a great’ like John Barnard, Rory Byrne or Aldo Costa, the theme can be even more so. As of the notice, these employees are no longer invited to certain meetings, they do not receive all the information, they are not allowed to see certain data…
The diatribe is that when they go out the door they harbor a lot of knowledge in their brain and this is inevitable to see them go out the door. Science has been investigating for years about a drug or potential processes to erase specific ideas from the mind, but they prick the bone, there is no way. So it is logical that if John Smith has given birth to a hexagonal exhaust pipe —for example— he knows by heart its measurements, heights, size, materials it is made of, application formulas, construction and effect on a specific mechanic. Grafting this idea onto another car is a matter of a few weeks.. Many have wanted to see, and in fact they can see, the gills of the Red Bull from a few years ago on the back of the green cars of Vettel and Stroll.
What they do there is the same as they did in the blue cars: cool hot zones, and that someone who designed it for one of the first ends up doing it for the second is normal if they did well and know how they work. This couldn’t be called a copy because it is surely a design intertwined in a different car and that attends to other circumstances, couples, but different. Although it would not be unfair to label it as ‘inspiration’ and it would be completely legal if, as has happened, the FIA has verified that they were designs developed under the roof of the factory that Aston Martin owns.
Meanwhile and as has always happened, the teams are bombarded in many ways to make Easter. The track is just one part, the most visible and obvious, but not the only one where this bloodless war is elucidated. A non-Olympic year has three hundred and sixty-five days, and there are only seventy-two days with cars on the track. Think of the things that can be concocted in those other two hundred and ninety-three. What can you expect from people who reach international agreements, between multinationals, in a McDonalds, in cars parked in airports, or whispering in airport newsstands? da for novel.