Max Verstappen believes that if an F1 car is judged as illegal then both team’s machines should undergo an inspection.
Both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified from last weekend’s US Grand Prix following a post-race check that revealed an amount of wear of their car’s floor plank that exceeded the 1mm margin authorized by F1’s regulations.
Along with the Mercedes and the Ferrari, Verstappen’s Red Bull and Lando Norris’ McLaren were also randomly chosen by the FIA for an inspection.
However, despite the fact that two out of the four cars were non-compliant, the governing body’s technical delegate did not extend the checks.
Asked whether the FIA should conduct a post-race inspection of every car in the field, Verstappen acknowledged that such a widespread probe would not be possible for practical reasons.
“Ah but then you get the race result on Tuesday, I guess, when you have to check out the car,” he said.
“The problem is that it’s just impossible to check everything, but I think the thought process from every team is that no one wants to be illegal. So no one sets up the car to be illegal.
“But then of course you have these random checks that get carried out. 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 these kind of things.”
However, Verstappen believes that common sense should dictate that if one car is found to be in breach of the regulations, than a team’s second car should also come under the scrutiny of the stewards.
“I think the only thing is when you check one car of the team and it’s illegal, then I think you should check the other one as well,” the Dutchman added.
“That for me is the only thing. Otherwise you DQ one, and the other one moves up one position, when normally you always run quite similar setups.”
While discussing the issue of last weekend’s post-race checks, Verstappen seized upon the opportunity to drive another stake through F1’s sprint format and its constrained timing that leaves teams with just a single practice session to set-up their cars for the remainder of the weekend.
“I think we should just get rid of the Sprint weekend, and then everyone can set up their cars normally,” he argued. “Because it wouldn’t have happened if we would have had a normal race weekend I think.
“These things only happen really I think when you have a Sprint weekend when everything is so rushed in-between FP1 and qualifying, you think ‘uhhh I think we might be OK’.
“From our side, I think we went a bit too conservative, but that of course is still better than the other way.”
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