Red Bull have revealed they asked motorsport governing body the FIA to investigate claims that Aston Martin had copied their car for this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix.
Aston Martin have turned heads in Barcelona with a heavily upgraded car, which has echoes of the front-running Red Bull.
But Aston Martin insist there is no foul play on their part and that the modified car had been given the all clear to compete this weekend.
A number of key Red Bull personnel were snapped up by Aston Martin in recent months, most notably Dan Fellows, head of aerodynamics at Red Bull and now technical director with the backmarkers.
And Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said: “Copying is the biggest form of flattery. It is quite a thing to instruct your team to come up with a very close-looking clone of our car and, of course, a few people have moved over the winter period, and what you can’t ctonrol is what they take in their heads.
“But what would be of grave concern to us would be if any IP [intellectual property] had in any way changed hands. That is where we rely on the FIA to do their job, their research. They have all the access and we will be relying on them heavily to ensure that no Red Bull IP has found its way into the car.”
Aston Martin said the investigation had already come to an end and that the FIA had signed off on its modifications on the cars of Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll.
A spokesman for Aston Martin said: “We have shared details of our upgrade with the FIA technical people. Having analysed the data and the processes used to create the update, the FIA has now confirmed in writing that our update was generated as a result of legitimate independent work in accordance with the technical regulations.”
