The Official Hungarian Grand Prix Thread

After the car first appeared in Barcelona testing its overall similarity to last year's Mercedes W10 was noted by rivals, who raised their suspicions of illicit sharing of IP with the FIA.

The FIA's head of single seater technical matters Nikolas Tombazis subsequently visited Racing Point's factory, where the team showed him evidence of how it had used photographs to "reverse engineer" the general aerodynamic concept of the Mercedes, a process that is legal when replicating listed parts.

After the Styrian GP, Renault protested the front and rear brake ducts on the Racing Point cars, in essence arguing that information shared in 2019 – when brake ducts were not listed parts – has been used on the 2020 car.

Racing Point has consistently argued that the FIA inspected the car and passed it legal.

However, FIA technical boss Nikolas Tombazis admitted that while the FIA approved the car in general, it didn't look specifically at the brake ducts that have now become the focus of Renault's protest.

"We did have some noises made by some teams over February, and we decided to investigate before Australia, and we did go to the Racing Point factory," he said.

"We primarily focussed on the rest of the car, not the brake ducts, fortunately or unfortunately. The rest of the car was extremely similar, and the rest of the car was listed both last year and this year, so there were no excuses in any form or shape.