Several F1 teams have been caught in a new controversy over how they’ve been bending the rules to keep their cars glued to the track.
The FIA, F1’s governing body, just dropped a new rule that’s shaking things up right before the season ends. They’re cracking down on teams who found clever ways to reduce wear on their cars’ undersides.
It’s all about getting as close to the ground as possible. The closer these cars run to the track, the faster they go – that’s just physics. But there’s a catch: get too low and you’ll wear down crucial parts of the car’s floor.
Ferrari and Mercedes learned this the hard way earlier this season. Both teams got kicked out of the US Grand Prix after their cars’ floor planks were worn down too much – basically, they’d been running their cars too low to the ground.
Now there’s a new twist.
Several teams had apparently found a sneaky way to protect their cars’ undersides from wearing down. Even Red Bull, the dominant force this season, admits they were using a similar system.
Surprisingly, Red Bull wasn’t the one who brought this to the FIA’s attention, despite what some rumors suggested.
Ferrari might take the biggest hit from this new rule, though insiders say it shouldn’t dramatically affect race results. Meanwhile, McLaren stands out as one of the few teams that wasn’t using this trick at all.
The new rule kicks in starting with the Las Vegas Grand Prix, forcing teams to rethink their approach to this delicate balance between speed and legal limits.
This is just the latest chapter in F1’s endless cat-and-mouse game between innovative engineers and rule makers. As one loophole closes, teams are already probably looking for the next clever workaround.
