Mercedes and Ferrari explain mistakes that led to disqualifications

AUSTIN, Texas — Mercedes and Ferrari engineers say the limited practice time afforded by F1’s sprint format contributed to costly setup errors they made at the United States Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton was stripped of his second place at the Circuit of the Americas and Leclerc of his sixth place after both cars were disqualified for excessive wear on the resin board attached to the bottom of their cars.

The board is made of a material that wears as it slides along the track surface, partly protecting the underside of the car but also allowing the FIA ​​to ensure a minimum ride height is maintained .

Running the car low to the ground can generate more performance thanks to the aerodynamics of the floor, but also risks inducing potentially dangerous losses of downforce when the car bottoms out.

To ensure that cars run in safe conditions, the FIA ​​monitors the wear of the boards by measuring four holes in the board which must be 10mm (+/- 0.2mm) deep at the start of the race and at least 9 mm deep at the time of departure. end of the race.

After the United States Grand Prix, hole depths were checked on Hamilton’s Mercedes, Leclerc’s Ferrari, Max Verstappen’s winning Red Bull and Lando Norris’ McLaren. Only Mercedes and Ferrari were found to be in violation due to excessive wear of the board material, leading to their disqualification.

The sprint format, which was used for the fifth time this year over the Austin weekend and includes qualifying for Sunday’s grand prix Friday afternoon, means that setup decisions, like ride height , should be taken after a single one-hour trial session instead of the usual one. three practice sessions of a normal race weekend.

Once qualifying begins, cars enter what is known as parc ferme, which significantly limits configuration changes and is intended to prevent teams from developing a car specification for single-lap performance. qualifications and another specification for the requirements of a full race distance.

Speaking after the disqualification, Mercedes track technical director Andrew Shovlin said the combination of limited practice time and the bumpy surface at the Circuit of the Americas led to his team’s mistake.

“We are of course very disappointed to lose our podium,” he said. “Unfortunately, this is one of the pitfalls of the sprint format where you have an hour of solitary racing before parc ferme.

“Running on a load of racing fuel during FP1, combined with a circuit as bumpy as this and the parts of the track where drivers have to place the car during the Grand Prix, contributed to lower performance levels. “We’re going to go out and learn from this, but also take the positives from our experience overall.”

Ferrari sporting director Diego Ioverno listed similar reasons for his team’s error, but also cited the change in wind intensity and direction during Sunday’s race.

“The sprint weekend is very special and you have very little time to prepare the car – basically just one session and then you go to parc ferme,” Ioverno said. “That means from that point on you can’t touch the car. On top of that, Austin is a super nice track but it’s extremely bumpy.”

“Bumps are a difficult subject for drivers and for cars. In the past, almost everyone has dropped the suspension and chassis. We knew it would have been tricky and that’s why we also lifted the car throughout FP1, and from our point of view it should have been OK.

“In fact, it turned out that we were too marginal anyway and also because of the wind which changed direction and had a stronger intensity than expected, this made our car not legal at the end.

“There’s not much to say and not much we can do at the moment. Looking back, rewinding the weekend, we might have lifted the car even more but we would have lost in performance, and we are always here to try to optimize.” our own performance.”

Toto Wolff, Mercedes team principal, added: “Set-up choices during a sprint weekend are always a challenge with only an hour of free practice – and even more so on a bumpy circuit like COTA and with a new package.”

“At the end of the day, none of this matters; others have figured out where we went wrong and there is no wiggle room in the rules. We have to take it seriously, learn and come back stronger next weekend.”.