The FIA has announced that it intends to provide updated guidance to ensure that collaboration between Formula 1 teams doesn’t contravene the sport’s regulations.
This prospective clampdown has come amid AlphaTauri’s increased technical tie-up with Red Bull enabling it to climb from the 10th to eighth in the Constructors’ Championship.
The Faenza-based squad, which is set to be rebranded for 2024, confirmed that it will now “use as many synergies with Red Bull Racing as are allowed by the regulations”.
Heading into next season, that has prompted concerns from rival outfits about two sides possibly working together to both benefit from gaining a competitive advantage.
Among those who questioned whether the decision to allow the Red Bull brand to own two F1 entries should be permitted was Haas Team Principal Guenther Steiner.
“I think, right or not right, it needs to be discussed,” Steiner said. “Obviously, there are a lot of other sports where that is not allowed. But up to now there was not an issue with this.”
But the FIA’s single-seater chief Nikolas Tombazis has detailed how the sport’s governing body does more stringent tests against teams that share a close capacity.
When asked about the partnership between Red Bull and AlphaTauri, Tombazis told Autosport: “We check teams that are in close proximity to each other a lot more closely than we check completely independent teams, exactly to make sure this thing doesn’t happen,” he said. “That is a concern.
“It has been a concern not only between the two teams mentioned, but also among other pairs of teams.
“We believe that AlphaTauri specifically does have quite different aerodynamic solutions to the other company, and we don’t think there’s any sign of any direct collaboration.
“Clearly, they are working hard and they have made a step forward. But I don’t think it can be said it’s due to collaboration.
“That said, collaboration, or making sure that no such thing happens, is one of the tricky parts of policing teams.
“We do need to audit and make sure that all of these teams are well segregated. And we will be issuing some further guidance quite soon to just provide further information to the teams about how they can convince us none of that is happening.
“We’re not underestimating the challenge and it is one of the difficulties we have.”
Tombazis has clarified that the FIA’s procedures are thorough enough to be aware if teams were trialling separate development directions to converge on an ideal solution.
“That is obviously heavily illegal, because we have at times in the past checked similar components between teams and then got into their development process to see how they evolved,” he addressed.
“I don’t think there’s something like that happening at the moment. We have checked and we have a process to check. Is it easy? No, I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s always sort of a challenge.”
Meanwhile, Tombazis also conveyed that the greater danger on the discussion resides with teams that work independently but could theoretically correspond virtually.
“The main incentive for two teams to collaborate isn’t whether they exchange components or whether they even share a wind tunnel,” he explained.
“You can have two teams collaborating, one is in the UK, and one is in Argentina, and if two teams wants to communicate against regulations, have Zoom calls and have the engineers chat with each other, that is quite feasible.
“We don’t watch people’s day-to-day movements, and nor is it our intention to do so. These pairs of teams get more frequently criticised for collaboration just because they have common ownership or whatever, but it is not the only pair of teams that could collaborate. You could have two independent teams who decide to mutually gain by helping each other.
“I don’t think that’s happening, but I’m just saying that our tools to prevent this happening don’t need to be just linked to physical components that are sold by one team to the other.”
