Under the checkered flag of the United States Grand Prix, Ferrari had finished the race in fourth and sixth place, differentiating the strategies between its drivers, despite both having started the race on a single stop. If the change in the race for Carlos Sainz arrived during the first stint due to the excessive degradation encountered in the attempt to stay glued to Lewis Hamilton, on the contrary Charles Leclerc remained on the initial plan, who however showed all the limits due of a hard tire that did not give the desired results.
However, at the end of the random post-race checks, it emerged that the pad on the Monegasque’s car did not respect the maximum consumption allowed by the regulations, which then led to the exclusion of the Ferrari driver, as well as that of Lewis Hamilton, who was disqualified from the final ranking with the same motivation.
The wear of the pad under the floor represented a problem for all the teams during the Austin weekend due to the nature of the track, which presents numerous bumps which then pushed the teams to react by raising the cars, aware of the risks that the numerous bumps in the asphalt could affect standard measurements and checks. Even if the consumption turned out to be only a few tenths higher than the permitted one, which provides for a maximum tolerance of one millimetre, when it comes to a technical infringement, as in this case, the regulation leaves no room for maneuver on penalties, indicating how the only alternative is disqualification.
Photo by: Ferrari
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari
“The technical regulations clearly state that, at the end of the race, there are measurements that must be respected for the lower part of the car, used to protect the car in contact with the asphalt. In post-race checks, our car was below the minimum threshold by a few tenths, but enough to lead the stewards to consider our position illegal. The regulation imposes disqualification for this case,” explained Diego Ioverno, Sporting Director of the Scuderia di Maranello.
The weekend with the sprint format also had an impact, because this reduced the time available to each team to verify the data obtained from the track, having to partly rely on the simulations carried out in the previous weeks. However, from the first moments on the track, several drivers underlined the poor conditions of the asphalt, reporting that the bumps, particularly in the fast corners, were even worse than last year. Typically at the end of each session and each day, the teams dismantle the car, check consumption and weigh the boards, in order to understand the margin available.
A theme that had already arisen in Singapore, when at the end of FP1, but especially post-FP2, several teams were forced to significantly raise their cars, thus losing performance. In Austin, however, the short time before the application of the Parc Fermé, which came into force at the start of qualifying on Friday, made it particularly complex to carry out the necessary in-depth analyses. Although the teams also intervened during FP1 or post-FP1, the fact of not having more time to analyze the data in depth misled some teams, who thought they had raised the cars sufficiently to avoid unpleasant surprises.
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W14, Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-23
“The weekend with the sprint is very special. You have very little time to prepare the car, just one session, because then you go straight to Parc Fermé. From that moment on you can no longer touch the car. Furthermore, Austin is a wonderful track, but it also has numerous bumps, a very complicated issue for the drivers and cars. In the past it has damaged suspensions or frames,” added Ioverno.
“We knew it would be difficult and that’s why we raised the car during FP1. From our point of view it should have been okay. The wind also had an influence, changing direction and increasing in intensity to a higher level than expected. All of this led to our car not being legal at the end of the race.”
Clearly, with hindsight, the Monegasque’s car could have been raised more, but the initial data indicated that, according to their projections, the car should have been legal at the end of the race and a further change to the set-up would have only resulted in a loss of downforce: “There’s not much we could have done. Going back, we could have raised the car even more, but we would have lost performance. But we are always here to try to optimize our performance. At the end of the weekend and this difficult race, as a side effect of what happened we ended up on the podium with Carlos [Sainz]gaining some points on Mercedes and McLaren, who are our main rivals at the moment,” added the Ferrari sporting director.
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