Lewis Hamilton’s suspicions might just have been proven right after the Brit suggested that several rule breaches from other drivers went unpunished at last weekend’s United States Grand Prix. Hamilton was only able to celebrate his podium finish at the Circuit of the Americas for a matter of hours, with Mercedes later being penalised for running his car too low to the ground.
It saw Hamilton stripped of second place as well as losing 18 valuable points, while Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc was also retrospectively disqualified for the same offence. It later transpired that only four cars were examined by the FIA after the race, which suggested that other unchecked drivers may have also been in breach of the rules.
There were also plenty of track limit breaches at the United States Grand Prix but it seems as though many went undetected as a result of another error from the FIA. The CCTV camera placed at Turn Six was not angled correctly, according to Auto Motor und Sport, preventing the stewards from taking action regarding any offences at that corner.
New footage appears to show Sergio Perez repeatedly driving to the right of the white boundary line at Turn Six, which he did ‘several times’ with varying degrees of severity. Alex Albon, meanwhile, was investigated and cleared regarding ‘some indications of possible infringements’ due to the CCTV footage not being available to the stewards.
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An FIA statement read: “During the post-race analysis, it was found that several drivers may have exceeded the track limit on the inside of Turn Six.
“In line with the stewards’ decisions (Document 59) in relation to an alleged rule breach on the inside of the corner, which stated that ‘the evidence available is insufficient to accurately and consistently infer infringements’, the FIA will update the monitoring infrastructure to ensure better coverage so that possible infringements can be reliably detected during the race in the future.”
It comes after Hamilton suggested on Thursday that more than half of the other drivers on the grid may have been disqualified if the FIA had tested every single car, rather than limiting their checks to just four of them.
“They had only tested a few cars and 50 per cent of them got disqualified,” said the Mercedes ace. “There are far more driver’s cars that were illegal [but weren’t checked]. The skid is not a performance element. Of course, if you have a flat surface everyone is going to be pushing their car to be as low as possible.
“It’s mostly that some cars handle the bumps better than others and you know we have had a very stiff and bumpy car for the last two years. Ultimately it failed the regulation and that needs to change.”
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