McLaren boss Andreas Seidl says the FIA must heavily police the nature of relationships between teams into 2021, to ensure no unfair advantage is gained.
Several Formula 1 teams have alliances with a rival, acquiring components, such as engines, suspension parts and gearboxes.
AlphaTauri has a close partnership with sister team Red Bull, Haas sources parts from Ferrari, while Racing Point utilises components from Mercedes.
Racing Point’s RP20 captured the attention during pre-season testing due to its likeness to last year’s title-winning Mercedes W10.
McLaren uses Renault customer engines, and will switch to Mercedes from 2021, but constructs the majority of its other components.
Seidl stressed that “we assume that the co-operation that is there between Racing Point and Mercedes is within the regulations, so there’s no point to complain”, but wants assurances that no-one can gain an unfair advantage in 2021.
“It’s more important for us to look at what’s happening for 21 regulations and beyond,” said Seidl, on Racing Point’s 2020 car design.
“I think there it’s even more clear or restricted what is allowed in terms of a working relationship between two teams.
“The FIA needs to make sure they are on top of this game, that the co-operation between two teams is first of all always within the regulations, and doesn’t allow the big team for example to benefit from things that are happening at a smaller team related to these so-called listed parts.
“We all know these examples which are around also in the press, like people rotating between teams or the coffee machine talks you have between two different teams talking about concepts and so on.
“This is something that we are worried about and that is our focus on the discussions we have with the FIA to make sure this is properly policed as that would obviously go against the regulations.
“It would help, let’s say an, A-team, having a co-operation to go around the regulations to increase their resources beyond the idea of the budget cap and that is the biggest worry for us to be honest.”
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