In a recent video, Mercedes’ technical director James Allison has spoken about Lewis Hamilton’s disqualification labelling it as a mistake.
Finishing second on track, Hamilton was disqualified due to his plank being too worn.
Not the only offender with Charles Leclerc also disqualified, the mistake removed Hamilton of his podium.
It has also possibly ruined his chances to finish second in the driver’s world championship.
In a video posted by Mercedes, Allison noted that, while 1mm of wear is allowed, Mercedes exceeded this. The car weared the skid block below 9mm from the original 10mm.
He said: “In Austin, which is a very bumpy surface, and therefore you’re more vulnerable to bumping the car. We just simply didn’t take enough margin.”
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Allison admitted that the car was illegal and that they should have given themselves more margin.
First place sitter, Max Verstappen could be seen visually with more space between the track and car than Hamilton. Both Verstappen and Lando Norris were checked, but passed the scrutineering.
Questions have been asked on the harshness of parc ferme in sprint weekends. Teams are not allowed to change their setup after FP1 meaning you have one hour to get the car correct.
Allison said: “You have a solitary hour at the very front of the weekend, FP1, to get the car ready for the next session, which is qualifying, the next session which is sprint shootout, the next session which is the sprint race and then the race itself.
“After one hour you have cast your die. You have chosen your setup and you have to run the rest of the weekend with the bets you placed in that one hour of running.”
“The disqualification is a significant blow, it’s a miserable feeling.”
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However, he was keen to state that this shouldn’t take away from the team’s improvements.
Hamilton finished just two seconds behind Verstappen and said the upgrades brought to Austin were the first he had properly felt on the car.
This made Allison was keen to diagnose the car as quicker.
He said: “The disqualification is a significant blow, it’s a miserable feeling. It hurts, everybody here feels its and everybody is upset.
“We’re embarrassed to a degree as well because we absolutely don’t like being on the wrong side of the rules and lamenting the lack of points.
“Give a day or two and that will begin to wane and be replaced by the much happier feeling that we moved the car forward this weekend.
“With four races left in the championship, four races where I’m pretty sure we will stay on the right side of the skid block rules, we will nevertheless have the uplift that we gave to our car.
“The weekend was a cast-iron vote of confidence in favour of the stuff we had put on the car. It gives us great hope for the races that remain.”
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