Marko: "What you can't prove in black and white, you should leave alone"

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7 June 2022 at 09:44
Last update 7 June 2022 at 11:50
  • GPblog.com

Prior to the Spanish Grand Prix, there was a riot within Formula 1. The B-specification of the AMR22 suddenly looked remarkably like the RB18 and that made Red Bull Racing suspect that Aston Martin had illegally gotten hold of data from the Austrian IP. Helmut Marko blew the whistle on this, but is now backtracking.

Some employees recently traded Red Bull for Aston Martin and that caused people like Dan Fallows to be thought to have taken information from their old employer. That is against FIA rules and so Red Bull demanded that work be done on the matter. However, the International Motorsport Federation found no grounds to declare AMR22 illegal and so racing in Spain and Monaco could proceed as usual.

Red Bull retracts allegations

Red Bull revealed during the weekend in Barcelona that data had been downloaded. An internal investigation was opened and the team of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez has since drawn its conclusions. Marko says that Red Bull is putting the matter to rest. Aston Martin thus seems to be definitively off the hook, something they have always been 100 percent confident about.

"As things stand, we can't prove anything and we won't go after it, because we don't see Aston Martin as a direct competitor of ours. What you can't prove in black and white, you should leave alone," Marko said in an extensive video interview with Motorsport-Total.com. Aston Martin was hoping to make a big move with the introduction of the new specification, but it didn't happen. Only one point was grabbed in Monaco by Sebastian Vettel.

FIA must provide clarity

So Red Bull will be putting its time and energy into other things from now on, but still the Milton Keynes-based formation wants clarity from the FIA on a few things. Marko and co. want to know how far you can actually go in imitating other people's cars. He points out, for example, that if there is still room for copying parts, then sister team AlphaTauri's car could become much more like the Red Bull in the future.