Protest was quite narrow and it seems the ruling was as well. And with this it leave questions unanswered and I also think the ruling includes contrary/conflicting logic.
The main problem I see with the ruling is that on one hand, they say that the design used was "designed by" Mercedes. And that "when" is irrelevant. So while it was legal in 2019 to share, it is not in 2020. In the ruling they say the effective date for the 2020 regulations was January 1st and yet they also say that Racing Point had the design prior to that.
However they don't force Racing Point to remove the part. That they can't "unlearn what they have learned". The implication is that they learning this in 2020? No, they learned this in 2019 when it was legal to learn the details. How can they unlearn what they learned in 2019? They also call out that it's OK to reverse engineer solutions as that has been done for a long time.
This part of the ruling is very weak and frankly makes little logical sense. In my opinion, logically either it's fully legal (you can copy parts/solutions) or its not legal (a copy still means it was "designed by" someone else). They need to pick one. They have generally given up and tried to fit somewhere in-between. IMHO, this ruling is about 50% based upon regulations and 50% politics.
But the FIA also say that are complicit by having unclear regulations. So far the game as been to use photographs, etc. to reserve engineer and make facsimile of the source part. With the unsaid expectation is that they would probably end up not being identical. This prior precedence totally ignored the logic they used above regarding "designed by". Because by their logic, the "designer" was the original team. Or maybe they way they dodged this is that it was "just different enough" due to the limitations of how parts have been copied in the past.
The FIA now understands this is a complete can of worms of their own making. The potential for this problem has existed for a long long time. For whatever reason, now is when it has becoming an issue. I suspect the reason is that it is so much easier today (due to advanced automation and scanning techniques) to convert things like images, etc. into working solutions. Previously it would have been hard and with likely less potential for "exact" duplication.
This is beyond the topic of Mercedes sharing a non-listed part in 2019. This is the FIA understanding that teams will accurately reverse engineer currently listed parts. The protest was over the brake ducts, but the bodywork is a listed part. Has anyone noticed a similarity between the 2020 Racing Point and 2019 Mercedes from a bodywork perspective.
That WAS a listed part in 2019.
Given they know it is a problem and could explode (potentially along the lines I outlined in an earlier post) they are looking to change the regulations (to stop "copy cat" designs).
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/15...from-next-year
I have to wonder what the behind the scenes discussions are like. To my logic above, Renault could protest the Racing Point bodywork. The brake duct precedence exists. However, I wonder if a back-channel conversation with between FIA and Renault might go like this...
Renault: We are going to keep protesting other parts of the Racing Point. This is not going to end. You already acknowledge the car is illegal.
FIA: Listen, we punished them. But you can't expect us to force them to redo the entire car in the middle of this pandemic and with a development freeze before 2022. We are going to clarify the regulations for next year. Racing Point will probably have to make some tweaks for 2021. But you have gotten as much as you can expect to get out of this. No more protests.
All unofficially of course!
There is a telling quote (by Nikolas Tombazis) in the above linked Autosport article. Does it not say the same thing. Maybe this public communication is the way the FIA is sending a message to Renault.
Quote:
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It will be of course accepted that teams, whatever they have now in the 2019/2020 cars, they are not supposed to delete it or start afresh because that is never how it works.
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Richard