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McLaren is not pursuing an appeal against the stewards’ decision regarding Renault’s protest of Formula 1 rival Racing Point, but Renault and Ferrari are.
Racing Point was hit with a €400,000 fine and 15-point constructors’ championship penalty after the FIA stewards found it guilty of illegally developing its rear brake ducts from Mercedes data.
The team protests its innocence and announced its intention to appeal the decision, but has yet to confirm if it is going ahead with it.
At the same, four of its rivals – McLaren, Ferrari, Renault and Williams – submitted their intention to appeal the verdict, seeking greater punishment.
They believe Racing Point has got off lightly for the offence because the team is able to continue running the parts for the remainder of the season.
There is also some confusion over why the FIA has retrospectively ‘grandfathered’ the front brake ducts that Racing Point also developed from Mercedes data, on the grounds that Racing Point actually used them in 2019 when that was allowed and incorporated the information into the DNA of its car.
Ferrari and Renault have confirmed they will go ahead with appealing the verdict, ahead of a 9am Wednesday deadline.
However, McLaren will not. Williams has not yet decided while Racing Point has not communicated its decision – although chairman Lawrence Stroll’s aggressive defence of his team on Sunday would suggest it will commit to trying to clear its name.
McLaren said in a statement that it “welcomes the stewards’ decisions and findings in this case and importantly that the FIA has demonstrated that transgressions of the rules will be investigated and punished.
“Moreover, McLaren Racing is pleased that the FIA will further clarify the sporting and technical regulations to protect Formula 1 as a sport where teams are clearly defined as constructors, and removes the potential that the Formula 1 World Championship includes cars that are, in effect, copies of other competitors.
“Taking the above and a broad view of all factors into account, McLaren Racing will not continue with an appeal in this case.
“Additionally, McLaren Racing respects the decisions of Ferrari and Renault to pursue their appeals and will follow proceedings with interest.”
Renault, which was responsible for the original protest, said that in addition to appealing the decision it is contributing to the process designed to create rules that will prevent ‘copycat’ designs in future that the FIA has said are in the works.
“We have confirmed out intention to appeal against the stewards’ decision in respect of the Racing Point brake ducts,” said a team statement.
“In the meantime, we will continue to work intensively with the FIA and all stakeholders to develop and implement a clear and enforceable regulatory framework that will ensure all teams participating in the 2021 season will develop their original aerodynamic concept by themselves.”
FIA head of single-seater technical matters Nikolas Tombazis said at Silverstone that F1 should not be a championship where copying rivals becomes the norm after Racing Point “took this to another level.
While saying Racing Point should not be penalised for copying the Mercedes aerodynamnic concept, he wants it not to be possible in the future.
“We don’t want next to have eight or 10 copies of Mercedes on the grid, where the main skill becomes how you do this process,” said Tombazis.
“We do plan, with very short notice, to introduce some amendments to the 2021 sporting regulations that will prevent this from becoming the norm.
“It will prevent teams from using extensive parts of photos to copy whole portions of other cars in the way Racing Point has done.
“We will still accept individual components to be copied in local areas but we don’t want the whole car to be fundamentally a copy of another car.”
