#technical talk

Interesting

miscalculation which some ppl did suspect (+ george had issues w the front wing too in quali) and the race yet again clearing up some misinformation for merc, its nice to see that mercedes finally decided to get a mouthpiece lmao

How has the season been going so far for Bezzecchi and Savadori? What has their communication been with the team, with regard to the setup of the bike?

don’t all the cars go through scrutineering after every race in some capacity? they must have previously passed skid wear checks right? how does this show mclaren has been cheating the whole time?

i’m not invested in them being legitimate i’ve been screaming that they’re illegal all season with little evidence except how disgustingly fast they were…i just don’t understand 😅

Good question anon.

Yes the scruteneering happens every race on a chosen number of cars. Skid wear specifically is done on all podium sitters and a few additional cars. So it's safe to say that the McLarens have gone through quite a few checks this season given the amount of podiums they've had.

The thing is, they passed all those checks because their plank didn't wear down. The cheating part comes with the reason the plank didn't wear down.

To put everything into perspective as to why the skid wear rule was introduced in the first place: after the crash and death of Senna it was said that the fact that the car was too low to the ground had an effect in the accident (don't ask me how I'm not that advanced in engineering). But essentially the reason was to prevent teams from running the car too low for safety reasons. Meaning if the plank is too worn your car was too close to the ground.

After the Brazil GP it was disclosed that some teams were using a trick that resulted in the plank not wearing down even with low ride heights. The trick was that they heated the metal rings on the plate, causing them to expand, and have the metal be the part of the car that touches the ground thus not wearing the plank. The ride height was still too low but the plank stayed intact. They had the benefit of a car that is low without the consequence of plank wear that could dsq them for safety reasons. Which is cheating because the reason the plank wear rule exists is to avoid low ride heights not the other way around.

For the entirety of the season they were checking the plank and the plank was fine so the checks passed. Also by the end of the races the metals had already cooled off enough for people to not notice or think anything of it. The reason I think they discovered it after the Brazil Sprint was that the sprint was too short and the metal hadn't cooled so the FIA delegates probably found it suspicious and realized what they were doing.

Now there is no confirmation as of yet that it was McLaren doing this trick but it's HEAVILY implied by them having this issue ON BOTH CARS the GP right after Brazil where the FIA discovered it. Not only that apparently the breach was severe meaning the plank wasnt worn down by a little amount but by a lot. Another thing that adds to it is that they had no time this weekend to really test how low they can go without their trick because fp2 which is the session when race pace is usually tested was cut short and noone did any testing for plank wear. McLaren also cited this as one of the reasons they made the mistake but my dudes, neither of the other teams had time to test race pace and somehow they got it right and you didn't. It smells like all the other teams had other relevant data from the other 21 GPs to go off of and you didn't because this is the first gp where you have to go racing without your little trick.

If it smells like a chicken and walks like a chicken or whatever that saying was...

Anyway I hope this explains it some more. TLDR Basically they did check them before but the plank was fine. The thing they used in order to have the plank be fine is the cheating part.

It's difficult to talk about who makes what decisions in formula 1. Sometimes a driver will make a decision and sometimes the team. But mostly it's the driver that decides together with a team of people. The engineers and the driver look at the data gathered during the 3 practice sessions and come up with a final setup they go with before qualifying. They do this together. Its very very rare and unlikely that a driver doesnt know what they did to his car but at the same time very unlikely that a driver makes a decision without consulting the team or a decision that the team doesnt agree with.

If they ran the car really close to the ground Lando and Oscar probably knew about it. But it doesnt mean that they made the decision. They probably knew the risk of being dsq but decided to take it. If this is really because of the heating then they probably weren't really sure how low they can go. Ferrari has the same issue on their car. The Ferrari is really prone to skid wear and they discovered this very early on (race 2) so they later setup the car higher. McLaren probably didnt know how low they can go because they had the trick before and could go extremely low because of the trick. They probably risked going lower especially because Vegas is not their best track historically and the risk was probably worth it for them.