Racing Point’s design team put their “egos” aside to create the pink Mercedes with Andrew Green acknowledging that Mercedes was clearly doing a better job than his team.
Taking to the test arena in Spain back in February, Racing Point unveiled that has been dubbed the ‘pink Mercedes’.
The RP20 draws heavily from Mercedes’ 2019 W10 – a car that won 15 grands prix, carried Lewis Hamilton to a sixth Drivers’ title and handed Mercedes a sixth successive Constructors’ crown.
“There are no egos involved when we make those sort of decisions,” Racing Point technical director Green told Autosport.
“I think that’s a big plus point for us and I think that’s why a lot of teams wouldn’t be able to do what we did – because there’s too many egos involved.
“There’s too much ‘Oh, no, no, that idea is not invented here’ syndrome – ‘We’ll do our own because we know better’.
“Well, we’re running around in fourth place, several seconds off of Mercedes so it’s a difficult argument for us to sit in a room and go, ‘Actually, we think we’re doing a much better job than Mercedes, we should just carry on doing what we’re doing’.
“We were just honest with each other and said ‘Look, they’re doing a better job than us. What are they doing? What are they doing that’s that good?’
“And so those are the discussions that you can have when you don’t have the egos within the team.
“Everyone’s just wants to do the best and they see it. So, it’s a strength of ours for sure.”
But while not all Racing Point’s rivals are impressed with the team’s path, the FIA gave it the go ahead.
Green added said: “We had the opportunity to do it and we grabbed hold of it, and everybody was up for it.
“It was a significant challenge – just psychologically – to talk to the team and say ‘Look, what you’ve done previously, you’re going to have to shelve that for now, we’re going have to go down a different route’.
“It’s a different type of learning. And it’s a concept that we have no real understanding of.
“And it’s going to be a significant challenge because it’s not a case of just taking a concept, looking at pictures and running it.
“It’s understanding the philosophy behind it and the concept behind it.”
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