28 October 2023 , 20:50
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Karun Chandhok called for the FIA to change its scrutineering process after Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified from last weekend's United States Grand Prix.
Checks on both drivers' cars found too much wear on the skid blocks underneath. That took them outside the regulations and left the stewards with no choice other than to disqualify both, after the issue was reported by the FIA's technical delegate.
Hamilton and Leclerc's cars had been chosen for the check after the FIA studied data it had collected during the race. And after discovering that level of wear, they decided to check the floors of the cars driven by Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, which passed the exam.
With a 50 percent fail rate, there were some suggestions that all cars should have had their skid blocks checked. While Sky Sports F1 pundit Chandhok questioned the practicality of that, he at least feels the regulations should be changed to make it so that the team-mates of those found to have flouted the rules should be looked at too.
"If you find two cars that are illegal, you should automatically check their team-mates," he said. "Because there's a good chance that they have very similar set-ups, so I think that's something that's worth thinking about for the future.
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"Every time you do a plank check, it takes half an hour. So, if you have to check all 20 cars, that's five hours, then the results have to be checked by the stewards, then eventually the results will come out. So, there's a question of, do we want a situation where the results are declared seven hours after the Grand Prix?
"We don't want that on every occasion, but what happened in Austin hasn't happened in 29 years so, actually, on that occasion, I think it warranted it. I wouldn't have minded waiting 'til Monday for the official results if I knew that all 20 cars were checked."
Speaking ahead of this weekend's Mexican Grand Prix, Hamilton asserted that more cars would have failed the FIA test had they all been checked. He said. "What's crazy is they only test four cars, 50 percent fail. And I've had information from many others that were also illegal but they got away with it. That's messed up.
"There have been many other scenarios like this where some people have got away with certain things and some people have got unlucky and got tested. There needs to be some form of better structure to make sure it is fair and even across the board."
And Norris, whose car passed the check, agreed: "I would love it if they had checked more cars. It can always bite you. They checked mine first. It's more [within] teams. It's unlikely two [cars in one team] are that different. If one car is illegal then there's a high chance the other car is."