It is no secret that the American team Haas is in close relationship with Ferrari. Indeed, they have no dedicated manufacturing facility; hence they need to buy both listed and non-listed parts from third party-sources.

The Scuderia provides the American team with listed parts, which are produced at a base in Maranello, separate from the main Ferrari factory. Haas also buys in their non-listed parts from outside sources.

Given the set-up of the team - in terms of the role of Ferrari in creating parts of the car, as well as buying in non-listed parts from other sources – Haas team Principal Gunther Steiner admitted that there are elements of the design that are not in their control.

It is no secret even that some teams have sought clarification with the FIA regarding Haas’ new car because “too similar” to the F1-75.

Toto Wolff didn’t hide his surprise in finding out that Haas has made such improvements from last season.  

“I mean, Haas has made a huge jump from being last, the way they were into being… having been solid and into Q3, I think, in Bahrain.

“So that's an interesting step. For us, it’s a learning exercise, because as an organisation, we have 2000 people and we've been successful in the past, and suddenly you're fighting a team that's much smaller in size. So, they must have done a super job”.

Even Alfa Romeo’s Team Boss Frederic Vasseur  holds a similar opinion, believing that it is hard to judge when “similar” becomes “too similar”

“Is it too similar? It's a good question. It's like the old and new regulations about financial, for example, that the most important is to be able to control everything, that we have restrictions on the wind tunnel, we have a restriction on the budget. But we have to trust the FIA, they are doing a good job. And for sure, there will be on every single case”.

Otmar Szafnauer, Alpine’s TP claimed: “[Haas] is a small team that's done well over the winter, from last to sometimes third fastest team. And it's a bit surprising.

“I thought – although Toto didn't – that the pecking order would stay almost the same because generally, in a big regulation change, over the years that I've been in Formula 1, the bigger the regulation change, the more it favours those with knowhow and the infrastructure and the tools to actually exploit the new rules. So, it's a bit surprising that the Haas are where they are for a small team – but I trust the FIA will investigate and come to the right conclusion between how similar the two cars are.

Presumably what Haas is doing at the moment is within the regulations, whether it's what used to be called the listed and non-listed parts, and the restrictions around shared facilities. However, in the past few weeks there have been a lot of rumors about Haas being a “white Ferrari”.

But are we moving to a point where regulations might require a change? Team Principals were asked during the post-race press conference in Melbourne.

Toto Wolff believes that to avoid similar circumstances, reform is needed, “because we want to avoid these kinds of discussions that we have now, the polemic around the last few days or last few weeks, everybody deserves to perform well, and people should get credit when they've done a good job”.

Then, he continued: “but some of the job-hopping or entity-hopping on the same premises is just creating arguments that are not necessary for the sport. So definitely for us, you know, we have Aston Martin in the wind tunnel that we had two years ago.

Quite a shitstorm about that. We have been handling them with the utmost diligence. But going forward, if we were to need to compromise our, let's say, income ability, we need to do this, because none of the teams should be able to cooperate in a way that we're seeing today, with some of the teams”.

Vasseur doesn’t agree with that and claims: “I'm not sure that we have to change the regulation, it's exactly the same story on the financial one also that we have to apply the rule.

“And the rule is strict enough to make it fair that at the end of the day, that the financial regulation, a good example, you just have to stick to the rule. And if you stick to the rule, it's more than OK.

“And it's why I think that we are trusting the FIA, because they have to do the job of the regulator and they are doing it, they are on it. And for me, it's OK like this”.

“I tend to agree with Fred,” said Szafnauer, “in an ideal world, the rules are pretty clear. And the difficulty is policing.

“So if the policing of the rules is impossible, then I think we should change the rules that are able to be policed such that the playing field is even. So I think there's more discussion to be had with the FIA, and perhaps a bit of reform on the rules such that they can be policed”.