‘2021 cars will be slight different to this year’s’

Michelle Foster
Sergio Perez Racing Point RP20

Aston Martin will "completely change the way we think" says Racing Point technical director Andrew Green.

Formula 1 may be retaining the same rules for 2021 but there will be some tweaks to the downforce with Racing Point saying fans can expected to see “slightly different” cars.

Following the cancellation of the Australian Grand Prix, all 10 teams agreed to race this year’s chassis next season.

They will, however, be allowed to develop the cars but only a certain percentage which has yet to be agreed upon.

But while Racing Point technical director Andrew Green concedes there will a “significant” carryover from this year to next season, he reckons the 2021 will some differences to this year’s.

“There’s a big push to try and maintain as much of the design up and down the pit lane going into 2021 to reduce the car costs,” he told Autosport.

“So I think that we will see a significant amount of carryover from all teams and I think some of it is going to be enforced by regulation and some of it is just going to be enforced by the timelines that we’re working to now.

“With everyone sitting at home not working, you can’t develop this car.

“There’s no development happening, so you’re naturally moving towards this year’s car racing next year.

“We are changing name of the car [when Racing Point is rebranded as Aston Martin at the start of 2021], but I think by the time we get to the first race in Melbourne all the cars will look slightly different.

“But there will be a significant amount of carryover up and down the pit lane.”

This year Racing Point has moved closer to Mercedes in the design of its car, which has been dubbed the ‘pink Mercedes’.

The car draws heavily from Mercedes’ 2019 W10 with Green saying pre-season performances showed that the team had made the right call in changing its philosophy.

“It’s just at the time we were weighing up the risk of what happens if we fail,” he said.

“If we stop what we’re doing, go down a different road and we don’t recover the performance and we end up with a car that’s actually slower than we had last year.

“And the thinking at the time was, ‘well, it’ll only be for one year, because we’re going to have to scrap it anyway’.

“That scenario, as far as I can see, didn’t materialise.

“So, for us now, we exceeded the performance of last year’s car with the new car. So, we’re not concerned about running it for effectively 18 months.”

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