Steiner hopes Racing Point appeal clarifies Mercedes' involvement

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner hopes the court of appeal will be able to clarify any potential involvement of Mercedes in the Racing Point brake duct saga.

On Thursday Racing Point was docked 15 constructors' championship points and fined €400,000 after stewards deemed the rear brake ducts to have been predominantly designed by Mercedes and not in house by Racing Point as per the regulations.

Racing Point refute this and has given notice of intent to appeal the decision, but Ferrari, Renault, Williams and McLaren have all given notice of intent to appeal the leniency of the sanction.

Steiner outlined Haas did not give any notice of intent to the FIA because: "There is three big teams protesting, three teams with a lot of money. This costs time, money and resources, and in the end, if you are going in as a small team, if the big teams protest they will have so much more ammunition to do it than we do."

He did however confirm his team would keep a watching brief and would be happy to answer questions on the topic if the court of appeal requested this.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has been keeping a close eye on the situation and Steiner was not surprised by the vociferous nature of the Austrian's defence of Racing Point.

Questioned by GPFans, Steiner said: "I’m not surprised of that one because they apparently gave data to Racing Point which is not allowed, like Ferrari would never give us data, that’s what I’ve said before, for the brake ducts last year for the ‘20 car because they are not allowed to.

"So for sure, he is trying to defend the case. He’s just doing his job you know."

He added: If they did [supply parts and/or data], there should be problems for them, but first we have to see if they did and that is what the court of appeal will hopefully find out with more detail than the stewards did.”

Both Wolff and Racing Point team principal Otmar Szafnauer have used the 2015 Haas car, one that closely resembled the '14 Ferrari, as an example of copying being prevalent in Formula 1 for years.

Of this, Steiner said: "Toto came up with in 2015 we copied the Ferrari and first of all, in ’15, things were completely different anyway and they were changed afterwards.

"We are five years on and first of all, we didn’t buy a Ferrari or we didn’t copy completely a Ferrari, but even if we did, it was still – what I want to say is, what we always did was always keeping the FIA informed and doing what was legal and not doing anything which you shouldn’t be doing, and if we didn’t know, we asked the FIA.

"It was as simple as this. I don’t understand why they didn’t do that and now trying to throw stones at us, but we know how it is. Attack is the best form of defence so that is what they are trying now."

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