The Aston Martin AMR22 was the most photographed car in the Barcelona pit lane. The British team, in fact, has brought to Spain a real B version of the car with updates that have concerned the bellies, the bottom and the rear wing.
The design of the bellies, however, immediately attracted attention given the extreme similarity with what was seen on the Red Bull RB18, so much so that many have renamed the Aston Martin the green Red Bull.
For the Silverstone-based team, it is not the first time that the design of its own project closely recalls what has been seen on cars from another team. In fact, already in 2020, Racing Point had been renamed the pink Mercedes given the absolute resemblance to the single-seater made by the German manufacturer in 2019.
On the basis of what happened two years ago, the FIA cracked down on reverse engineering projects and the leaders of the Federation announced that they had examined the B version of the Aston Martin.
Aston Martin AMR22, detail of the bodywork
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
The F1 governing body said that during a “routine pre-event check” of the planned updates for the Aston Martin, “it emerged that a number of features of the Aston Martin resembled those found on a car. other competitor “.
This led to an investigation into the car to confirm compliance with Article 17.3 of the Technical Regulations, relating to reverse engineering and the “potential illegal transfer of intellectual property”.
Through the investigation, the FIA found that Aston Martin complied with the regulations through its process, making new updates legal.
“The investigation, which involved CAD checks and a detailed analysis of Aston Martin’s development process, confirmed that no wrongdoing was committed and therefore the FIA believes Aston Martin’s aerodynamic upgrades are compliant.” reads in the FIA press release.
Article 17.3 specifically defines and prohibits “Reverse Engineering”, which is the digital process of converting photographs (or other data) into CAD models, and prohibits the transfer of intellectual property between teams, but likewise this article allows that the designs of the cars are influenced by those of the competitors, as has always been the case in Formula 1 “.
“In the analysis we carried out we confirmed that the processes followed by Aston Martin are consistent with the requirements of this article.”
An Aston Martin spokesperson said: “We have shared the details of our update with the FIA technicians. After analyzing the data and processes used to create the updates, the FIA has now confirmed in writing that our upgrade was generated as result of legitimate independent work in accordance with technical regulations “.
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