Alpine executive director Marcin Budkowski has said he is hoping the FIA is “all over” illegal inter-team collaboration.
With Formula 1 adopting new regulations next year, teams with technical partnerships – such as Ferrari and Haas, or Mercedes and Aston Martin – could benefit greatly from collaborating with or copying one another.
This issue was highlighted last year, after Racing Point (now racing under the Aston Martin brand) were found to have illegally copied the rear brake ducts of Mercedes’ 2019 car.
Budkowski has stressed that Alpine have nothing to gain from illegally helping other teams gain an advantage, but noted that this isn’t the case throughout the F1 grid.
“I don’t know what’s going on in other people’s factories. I don’t know what level of scrutiny the FIA is putting on us as an independent team,” he said.
“Obviously, we don’t come under the scrutiny of sharing anything with our competitors because it would be against our own interest.
“Normally we’re all competitors. The Formula 1 I think we’d all like to see is 10 teams, or 11 or 12 in the future, that just fight each other mercilessly and are just there for their own sporting success.
“From the moment that teams have a common interest in exchanging information, that’s a problem because it shouldn’t be the case. You shouldn’t be helping your competitors.
“There’s a concern there, but I can’t say how much. I’m not going to accuse people because effectively I don’t know and I hope there’s nothing happening.”
Continuing, he stressed that 2022 presents a big opportunity for certain teams to move up the grid by copying their competitors, due to the sweeping regulation changes.
“Clearly, going into 2022, a massive change of regulations, big development slope, lots of performance being gained on these very, very green, fresh set of regulations, the benefits you can get from collaboration, whether it’s legal or less are massive,” Budkowski added.
“If there’s a year where these kinds of collaborations could pay off, it’s this year for 2022.
“Clearly, if there’s a year where we expect the FIA to be really all over it, it’s this year.”