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It has long been acknowledged that Mercedes' dominant PU has it's roots in their road going R & D long before the current regulations came into force. That advantage over both Ferrari and Renault came from within the larger Daimler Benz group, and had nothing to do with Mercedes F1, and one must assume that the costs would and could not be attributed to the racing team.
Would you expect the FIA, or their finance police if this came about, to make Daimler Benz re-write their audited accounts so that some or all of the costs would be assumed by the F1 team?
And who is going to pour over their staff situation as it's well known that Mercedes move their engineers around quite a bit, and who is going to pay for policing which part of their group is picking up the tab for engineers who may be seconded to the team for short periods. And, by the way, that is what happened back in 2010/11 when the new PU regulations were formalised; MB seconded engineers from their road going R & D, who had been developing a similar system for cars, vans and trucks, to the race team.
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