FIA Plank scrutineering - How fair is it?

[Nitrodaze]

Out of twenty cars, the FIA decided to operate a policy to only scrutinize four cars randomly. However, the choice of cars they chose to scrutinize at Austin did not seem random as they chose cars from the top four teams in the competition.

This type of scrutinizing is called sampling. The idea of sampling is to discover the presence of abnormality. Upon finding an abnormality in the sample, the sampler is normally compelled to check the rest of the items to weed out all items with the abnormality.

In the FIA case, they had found that there were cars with below acceptable plank wear in the sample of four cars which would indicate that there are other cars that finished the race in this condition. With this knowledge, It ought to be their duty to check the full grid to weed out those cars that would fail the plank skid block test. In a fair world.

As the cars in the sample of four were disqualified, all cars in the revised top ten ought to be scrutinized to ensure cars that would fail the test are not benefiting at the expense of the disqualified. To be properly fair. As a minimum, they should test both cars from the team with a failed car to be remotely thorough.

What we saw at Austin was a very poor excuse for scrutineering. It was very lazy and below industry standards. We may have a car that may fail the plank test on the podium as a consequence. There is no way to tell if Sainz's or Russell's car would have failed the same test.

It could have been a boon for the hard-working midfield teams like Williams and Alpha Tauri if a proper job was done, don't you think?

That aside, how relevant is the skid block test in this ground effect era where the car is meant to be run as low as possible? Bouncing has become a well-known side effect of the ground effect operation. The skid block was introduced to prevent cars from harnessing ground effects illegally in the pre-2021 eras.

With that in mind, what is the point of the skid block in this era of car regulation? Is it to not harness too much ground effect? Of course, when the plank wears, the car gets lighter, but does it get light enough to produce an unfair advantage?

We did not see evidence of any consideration of these points in the steward's deliberation on the matter. When Hamilton is involved, they typically get very heavy-handed like the million Euro fine proposed for crossing a live track for instance.