The FIA plans to issue new guidelines soon in an attempt to ensure that any collaboration between Formula 1 teams does not violate the regulations, especially concerning collaborations between the parent team and customer team. Additionally, Nikolas Tombazis has explained the measures currently used by the Federation to prevent teams from collaborating behind the scenes to explore alternative development paths to reach the best solution more quickly.
In recent weeks, attention has increased regarding the collaboration relationship between certain teams, particularly following the significant improvements achieved by AlphaTauri through its closer ties with Red Bull.
Looking ahead to the 2024 season, where AlphaTauri intends to use many more parts from the parent team than in the recent past, some teams have expressed concerns about the possibility of two teams gaining an advantage from such a close collaboration.
The FIA is well aware of the risk that teams may benefit from collaboration in a particular way. However, according to the Federation, the controls in place are robust enough to detect any attempt to circumvent the regulations, especially with increased scrutiny for openly collaborating teams.
Asked about the relationship between Red Bull and AlphaTauri, Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA’s head of single-seaters, stated that the analysis of both cars for now has shown nothing to worry about. “We monitor teams that are close to each other much more closely than completely independent ones, just to make sure that nothing unusual happens. It is a concern.”
“It has been a concern not only between the two teams mentioned but also between other team pairs. We believe that AlphaTauri has very different aerodynamic solutions from the other company, and we don’t think there is any sign of direct collaboration,” Nikolas Tombazis explained, emphasizing that other teams are also under scrutiny, such as the relationship between Ferrari and Haas.
“It is clear that [AlphaTauri] is working hard, and they have taken a step forward. But I don’t think it can be said that it is due to collaboration. That said, collaboration, or ensuring that nothing like this happens, is one of the difficult parts to investigate. We have to check and make sure that all these teams are well separated and so on. And soon, we will publish further guidelines to provide additional information to teams on how to convince us that nothing like this is happening. We are not underestimating the challenge, and it is one of the difficulties we have.”
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There have been theories about teams collaborating to explore alternative development paths, such as experimenting with different wing concepts, to expedite reaching the best solution.
However, Nikolas Tombazis is clear that such activity would constitute a violation of the regulations and would easily be discovered by the way the FIA inspects projects.
“It is obviously an illegal activity because, in the past, we have checked similar components between teams and then entered their development process to see how they have evolved,” he said. “I don’t think something like that is happening at the moment. We have checked, and we have a checking process. Is it easy? No, I’m not saying it’s easy; it’s always a kind of challenge.”
But while Nikolas Tombazis is confident that the FIA can monitor closely collaborating teams, the greater risk comes from teams working independently.
“The main incentive for two teams to collaborate is not the exchange of components or sharing a wind tunnel. Two teams can collaborate, one in the UK and the other in Argentina, and if two teams want to communicate against the rules, make Zoom calls, and have engineers chat with each other, that’s quite feasible. We don’t observe the daily movements of people, and it is not our intention to do so. These teams [like AlphaTauri and Red Bull] are criticized more often for collaboration just because they have common ownership or other factors, but it’s not the only pair of teams that could collaborate. There could be two independent teams deciding to mutually benefit by helping each other. I don’t think that is happening, but I’m just saying that our tools to prevent this from happening should not only be tied to physical components being sold from one team to another.” – he concluded.
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