Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified for excessive plank wear last weekend but their rivals believe others have avoided being penalised for the same infraction previously.
The FIA inspected the planks on four of the 17 cars which finished the United States Grand Prix on Sunday. Those of Hamilton and Leclerc were found not to comply with the regulations regarding minimum thickness.Teams only had a single hour of practice to set their cars up at the sprint event. As the majority of cars were not checked for plank wear, some drivers think it is inevitable others were not compliant with the rule.
“What the teams have in terms of data and information to set the ride heights for the weekend is very marginal,” said Alexander Albon, who was promoted to ninth place by the disqualifications. “There’s not even really enough time to build the cars up in P1, just to get a feel for where they need to be.”
The Williams driver suspects the cars belonging to Hamilton and Leclerc’s team mates would have failed the same checks.
“I do think maybe you don’t need to check every car, every race, all the time. But if there’s one driver in one team illegal, there’s a very, very high chance that the other car, the team mate of that driver, is going to be illegal as well.
“So I don’t know how much it would take to check a couple more cars, but I don’t think that would be such an issue. But I don’t know I’m not a scrutineer.”
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At the first sprint event this year in Azerbaijan, Alpine took its cars out of parc ferme, requiring them to start from the pits, in order to make set-up changes to avoid falling foul of the minimum plank thickness rules. One of their drivers, Esteban Ocon, believes last weekend’s race wasn’t the first time a car has worn its plank excessively.
“I think it is an extremely difficult exercise just to be guessing what your ride height has to be,” he said. “There is a risk and reward, obviously, in that sort of exercise that if you get the car lower you get more performance, but it’s at the risk of are you going to be illegal with your plank?
“We’ve seen cars changing set-up throughout the weekends because of those things and it is just too short for an FP1 to set your car up. So I’m sure it’s not the first time that there was cars illegal like that on such weekends or such sprint weekends. I think on normal format it’s a lot less likely to happen but I’m sure on the other races there was as well.”
Ocon’s team mate echoed his view that a single hour of practice on sprint race weekends is not enough to teams to accurately set up their cars. “I think there’s a couple of things which we could do to improve what’s happened in Austin, starting with the sprint weekend when we’ve got only an FP1 session on such a track,” he said.
“You’re doing 15 laps with quite a low amount of fuel in the car. So, to get a gauge of what you’re going to get for the next 70 laps, with two qualifying [sessions], a sprint race, a complete grand prix of 59 laps with a lot of fuel, you’re going pretty much blind after FP1 with very little information on where to base yourselves. So I think it’s a tricky thing probably we can improve that process and give giving us more time to readjust if needed.”
He said F1 should adopt the more regular checks seen in junior categories.
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“I remember my karting days where all top-three cars were always checked. Whenever you finished on the podium you would be checked every single time. And then on top of that there will be random checks as well running down the order.
“I think it’s been always from the past only in F1 where it’s not as standard to check all top-three cars. But it was tricky and I think the sprint format made even more tricky considering we have a short amount of time to set the car up.”
The two disqualifications moved Nico Hulkenberg up to 11th, one place outside of the points. However he didn’t know whether he would have stood to benefit if all cars had been checked. “I might have been illegal myself,” he said. “You never know.
“Obviously, these cars are incredibly sensitive to ride height. The lower you get, the more downforce you get. That’s the constant fight we have and we need to find the right balance. I think Austin is a bit specific with the bumpiness and also with a lot of apex and exit kerbs where you can run them quite aggressively. You do use the plank and wear down those shims a lot.”
The FIA said in a statement today it would not be possible to perform every technical check on every car.
While Hamilton was disqualified following his car’s inspection, his team mate George Russell’s Mercedes was not checked. He believes his team will not repeat their mistake this weekend in Mexico, where the sprint race format is not being used.
“I think it’s a very difficult layout here,” he said. “We did all the standard checks after the single practice session and [we thought] it should be fine. So there was no reason after the practice session to make any changes. But obviously we got that very wrong.
“I expect the nature of this circuit to be naturally more conservative and with the three practice sessions, I don’t foresee any issues.”
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2023 United States Grand Prix
- US GP was Mercedes’ best race of 2023 despite disqualification – Wolff
- Singapore and Austin retirements cost me top 10 championship place – Ocon
- United States Grand Prix result unchanged as FIA rejects Haas’ call for review
- Sargeant admits he’s ‘struggled to use all the downforce at times’ in F1
- Mercedes’ Brazilian GP set-up was “conservative” after US GP disqualification
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
26th October 2023, 22:34
Oh dear sweet innocent Nico, I can guarantee that your team will know. They won’t say, but they’ll know!
notagrumpyfan
27th October 2023, 8:05
I would even tell the driver (only) when the plank thickness passes the test.
It would be quite strong if they could claim without blinking that their car was ’legal’, and even stronger if Sainz/Russell could claim (if true) that they used the same ride height as their teammates.
sethje (@seth-space)
26th October 2023, 22:38
Its very likely the plank of georges car was legal. The speed difference between the two mercedes was to good to be true.
That calls for the question who decided to lower the ride heigth at lewis car?
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
27th October 2023, 0:03
Now I think about it, it’s not just about performance because hamilton is often better than russell in the race, and it’s not like leclerc was having a better race than sainz, but I actually read somewhere that the fia noticed unusual oscillations on hamilton and leclerc, found them to be not compliant and then checked verstappen and norris too to be sure; from what I read in that article there was a visible difference between leclerc and hamilton’s oscillations and their team mates, so they might have been legal.
Khürt Williams (@khurtwilliams)
27th October 2023, 3:44
But the FIA have said that the cars they inspected are chosen at random.
.
SteveP
27th October 2023, 8:09
So were they randomly chosen, and by coincidence only included podium places plus one, or were they chosen because of unusual oscillations or some other reason?
Maybe it’s the specific race weekend that is the random factor, and they don’t routinely check?
So, which race weekend is next to be drawn out of the hat?
MacLeod (@macleod)
27th October 2023, 8:22
@khurtwilliams and SteveP As the rules said the selection is done randomly BUT there is also a add on the rule as the FIA suspect something they can select cars and in this case they selected the top 3 and the polesitter … nothing random about this choice.
melanos
27th October 2023, 22:24
I am a bit confused over this.
First, AFAIK the FIA can check whatever tech issue in whichever car they please, so they are not breaking any rule by checking what they did in the cars they did, people like it or not.
But second, I have read two contradictory assertions supposedly by the FIA
-First, that they checked the cars at random (sounds a bit unlikely that they did that and chose the podium winners and the polesitter, but hey, it is not impossible).
-Second that they chose in particular #16 & #44 due to their suspicious porpoising, Well, good gor them if they fid that, but certainly that’s not a random choice. And it kinda voids the argument that if 2 out of 4 cars checked were illegal, most likely a lot more would have been found illegal too if checked. I find it perfectly possible that only these two were illegal. if only they showed suspicious bouncing.
–
Anyway, did really the FIA officially say both these things? Both cannot be true at the same time. And certainly the second one sounds a lot more plausible than the first.
OOliver
27th October 2023, 4:04
What is crucial to understand is that the planks started the race legal but ended the race illegal.
It is also possible that without the sprint race and sprint qualifying, they cars might have been legal at the end of the race. It is 50 – 50 that the team mate car would have been illegal. It all depends on how your race went.
The faster you go the greater the downforce and more scrubbing on the bumps.
Hamilton was pushing from much earlier in the race with a heavier car while Russell got to push harder when his car was lighter because he was stuck in traffic for longer. A driver also takes odd racing lines when trying to get past the car ahead which means a different series of bumbs.
Redbull over the years with their high rake concept had perfected the art of running the front floor very low and get the skid blocks grinding all the way round the track.
anonono
27th October 2023, 6:03
It was 0.05 mm. Hardly enough for a performance gain.
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
27th October 2023, 11:58
I presume the 0.05mm is the amount of excess plank wear they had on their cars. Ride height is maybe the most significant factor in the plank wear, but not the only factor, so we don’t know how much lower their ride heights were compared to their opposition. They could even have been running higher ride heights, but had more bouncing or hit the kerbs more aggressively or something else that caused the excess wear.
drmouse (@drmouse)
27th October 2023, 7:52
I don’t think you can say this at all. Leclerc want significantly faster than Sainz, and Hamilton is often significantly faster than Russell (as is to be expected of a driver of his experience). There is every chance that their cars were identical and suffered the same plank wear.
drmouse (@drmouse)
27th October 2023, 7:52
That was supposed to be in reply to sethje.
Jere (@jerejj)
27th October 2023, 11:11
Doubtful & as if they could know for certain, so purely pointless guessing.
anon
27th October 2023, 14:20
@jerejj is it? Leclerc has indicated in other interviews that Sainz was running the same ride height settings as he was, so there is the possibility that his floor might also have been excessively worn.