Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen says the FIA should be conducting post-race inspections on drivers who are team-mates to those disqualified for technical infringements.
Last weekend’s United States Grand Prix saw both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc disqualified after the race due to their planks showing excessive wear.
Hamilton and Leclerc were two of four drivers from the 17 finishers to have their cars undergo a post-race inspection, the other two being Verstappen and McLaren’s Lando Norris.
But even after Hamilton and Leclerc were removed from the final classification, their team-mates George Russell and Carlos Sainz did not have their cars checked to ensure they complied with the regulations.
Verstappen questioned why the FIA did not carry out further checks on other cars because it was likely they too would have been found to have breached the rules.
“When you check one car of the team and it’s illegal, then I think you should check the other one as well,” Verstappen said, as quoted by RaceFans.
“That’s for me, the only thing. Because otherwise you DQ one, then the other one moves up one position where normally you always run quite similar set-ups.”
Verstappen doesn’t suspect Mercedes and Ferrari intentionally ran their cars too low to simply gain an edge in performance, blaming the limited practice time on a sprint weekend for the teams’ error.
“I don’t think anyone does it on purpose,” he said. “It’s just even more because of this sprint format that you only have one practice session where you try to nail everything and once you are in the wrong, there’s nothing you can do.
“The only thing you can do is pump up the tyre pressures, but then you’re driving around on balloon tyres.
“So it’s of course not what you want to see, I guess also for them, as a team. Of course we know that dropping the car, it gives you performance, but I think it’s also just because of that whole format that you put yourself in this position, because normally I don’t think anyone in a normal weekend would run like that.”
The FIA has been criticised for only carrying out inspections on only four cars, which the governing body responded by insisting it would not be possible to check every car after a grand prix.
“The problem is that it’s just impossible to check everything,” Verstappen said. “But the thought process from every team is no one wants to be illegal, so no one sets up their car to be illegal.
“Then, of course, you have these random checks that get carried out and sometimes it’s the top four, sometimes it’s in the middle of the field, the back, that’s just how it goes, you can’t check every car for every single part of the car, otherwise we need 100 more people to do this kind of thing.”
