Lewis Hamilton suspicions backed up as new footage shows rules being broken
Lewis Hamilton’s doubts could soon be put to rest after the Briton suggested that several offenses committed by other drivers at last weekend’s US Grand Prix went unpunished. Hamilton was able to celebrate the podium at the Circuit of the Americas just hours before he was penalized for driving the Mercedes too low to the ground.
This earned Hamilton second place and a valuable 18 points, while Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc was also retroactively disqualified for the same offence.
It was later revealed after the race that the FIA had only inspected four cars, leading to speculation that other drivers who were not inspected may also have broken the rules.
There were many road restrictions violated at the United States Grand Prix, but another FIA error seems to have left most of them unnoticed.
According to Auto Motor und Sport, the CCTV cameras installed at Turn 6 were not at the correct corner, preventing the stewards from taking action on infringements from that corner.
New footage shows Sergio Perez crossing the right side of the white line in turn six, something he has done “several times” with varying degrees of severity.
Alex Albon was investigated and cleared for “some indication of a possible violation” because body camera footage was not available to administrators.
“During the post-race analysis, it was discovered that several drivers exceeded the track limits in six laps,” the FIA said in a statement.
The FIA will update its monitoring following the stewards’ decision (document 59), which states that “the available evidence is insufficient to accurately and consistently conclude an infringement” regarding the alleged infringements of the inside corner rules.
An infrastructure that provides better coverage to reliably detect potential violations in future runs.
It comes after Hamilton suggested on Thursday that more than half of the other drivers on the grid could have been disqualified if the FIA had tested all the cars instead of limiting inspections to just four.
“They only tested a few cars and 50 percent of them were disqualified,” the Mercedes CEO said.
“There are a lot of cars with illegal (but untested) drivers.
Vouchers are not performance items.
If the surface is flat, everyone will push their cars as low as possible.
“Mainly because some cars handle bumps better than others and we’ve had some really rough and bumpy cars in recent years.
“In the end, it didn’t fit the rules and had to be changed.”
