It takes a lot of time to do these tests, and the risk of being chosen to be tested is usually enough deterrence to prevent teams from breaking the rules. They definitely should increase the number of cars they check for plank wear now though.
They also don’t check the fuel of every car, only half of the cars.
I know some of the tests are hard to perform, and not practical to do on every car. But I can’t imagine how some tests, especially plank checks, aren’t feasible to perform on every car.
I think it mainly has to do with logistics. Some of the races are really close together (like US and Mexico) so the teams start packing the cars into crates immediately when the race ends so they can get to the next race on time. If every team had to have the plank check be done on their cars, some of the teams would have to wait a long time until the FIA officials finally get to their car, remove the plank from the bottom, and use take the measurements to check the legality.
A plank check is not just taking out a ruler and checking the width of the plank. https://youtu.be/ldD0lWG1fjQ?feature=shared explains more about why this is more complicated than people think and hence why it is not feasible for the FIA to check all the cars
Edit : could somebody check the piped link below to see of it works for them. I use piped but the formula 1 channel and all its videos never load for me.
Interesting video, but it doesn’t really explain how the planks are measured though. Is the FIA using a micrometer? CMM? Laser?
I don’t see why removing the planks for measurement is such a problem either. The teams will be removing and replacing the planks whether or not they get measured.
Can confirm the piped link isn’t working for me either. If this is an ongoing issue we will need to review if the bot should be on the sub.
Also the problem with the planks is clearly an FIA problem. They could have an easier measurement method instead of making it so complex. They could simply mill wear lines into that plank that can be checked visually and if a visual check fails then do the more detailed one.
It takes a lot of time to do these tests, and the risk of being chosen to be tested is usually enough deterrence to prevent teams from breaking the rules. They definitely should increase the number of cars they check for plank wear now though.
They also don’t check the fuel of every car, only half of the cars.
I know some of the tests are hard to perform, and not practical to do on every car. But I can’t imagine how some tests, especially plank checks, aren’t feasible to perform on every car.
I think it mainly has to do with logistics. Some of the races are really close together (like US and Mexico) so the teams start packing the cars into crates immediately when the race ends so they can get to the next race on time. If every team had to have the plank check be done on their cars, some of the teams would have to wait a long time until the FIA officials finally get to their car, remove the plank from the bottom, and use take the measurements to check the legality.
A plank check is not just taking out a ruler and checking the width of the plank. https://youtu.be/ldD0lWG1fjQ?feature=shared explains more about why this is more complicated than people think and hence why it is not feasible for the FIA to check all the cars
Edit : could somebody check the piped link below to see of it works for them. I use piped but the formula 1 channel and all its videos never load for me.
The piped link doesn’t work for me either.
Interesting video, but it doesn’t really explain how the planks are measured though. Is the FIA using a micrometer? CMM? Laser?
I don’t see why removing the planks for measurement is such a problem either. The teams will be removing and replacing the planks whether or not they get measured.
Can confirm the piped link isn’t working for me either. If this is an ongoing issue we will need to review if the bot should be on the sub.
Also the problem with the planks is clearly an FIA problem. They could have an easier measurement method instead of making it so complex. They could simply mill wear lines into that plank that can be checked visually and if a visual check fails then do the more detailed one.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/ldD0lWG1fjQ?feature=shared
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.