Albon calls time on “random” post‑race checks after McLaren’s Vegas DSQ
Alex Albon doesn’t want any more roll of the dice in the scrutineering bay. In the wake of McLaren’s double disqualification in Las Vegas for excessive plank wear, the Williams driver says the FIA’s post‑race spot checks belong in the past. If you want a fair fight, check every car.
McLaren had crossed the line second and fourth under the Strip lights before the floor legality checks bit back. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s MCL39s were found outside the 9mm skid block minimum in multiple places, and both were thrown out. McLaren later pointed to an “unexpected occurrence of extensive porpoising” as the root cause, not any wild chase for lap time. Either way, the message across the paddock was clear: the plank still rules.
Albon’s view? The rules are fine; the enforcement is the issue.
“We could run these things on the deck if we wanted and have no legality issues if we’re not checked,” he said in the paddock. “I don’t like that it’s random. I’d rather have 20 cars get checked every weekend and then you’ve got a fair game.”
Right now, every finisher is weighed. Beyond that, the technical team selects a handful of cars for deeper inspection, and one car typically goes into a full teardown. It’s a long‑held compromise to ease the logistical crush of back‑to‑backs and flyaways. But after Vegas, the lottery feel is starting to grate.
The nub of it is how fine the margins have become with ground‑effect cars. Teams trim ride heights to the millimetre based on wind shifts and temperature swings; a headwind down a long straight can drop the car enough to trigger porpoising and, crucially, chew into the plank quicker than the simulations predicted. Once wear readings dip below 9mm, there’s no wiggle room. The measurements on Norris’s car reportedly came in at 8.88mm and 8.93mm in two sections; Piastri’s had three hits in the high 8s. That’s the difference between trophies and a DNS line on the sheet.
“We all factor in limits,” Albon explained. “There’s a lot of lap time being a mill lower. These cars are incredible now — you’re setting ride heights for the wind you expect in the race. Get it wrong, get porpoising, and you’re into estimates and adjustments with hardly any running on Sprint weekends. Sometimes you finish on Sunday kicking yourself because you’ve got hardly any plank wear and think you could’ve gone lower. That’s the rule set.”
The fairness question, though, is what keeps coming back. If a team pushes to the edge and gets lucky with the draw, fine. If they don’t, they’re out. F1’s always lived in that grey zone between what’s legal, what’s clever, and what’s discovered. But there’s a difference between getting caught and just not being inspected.
McLaren’s line has been consistent: this wasn’t about reckless set‑up. Team principal Andrea Stella described the porpoising event as the specific trigger, and while Norris acknowledged that everyone stretches to the limit, he insisted Vegas shouldn’t be read as a deliberate gamble gone wrong. That might be true. It may also be irrelevant in the eyes of the regulations, which don’t make allowances for intention.
Albon isn’t asking for leniency. He’s asking for consistency.
“Rules are rules,” he said. “Just make it the same for everyone.”
Could the FIA feasibly scale up to post‑race checks on all 20 cars every weekend? It’s a tough sell in a world calendar that’s already bursting, but tech checks are increasingly automated, and floor legality is a high‑impact area. The cost of not catching something — in competitive integrity terms — is higher than ever when tenths are found in a millimetre here or there.
Looking ahead, Albon expects this specific flashpoint to ease, but not disappear. Regulatory tweaks on ride height sensitivities and floor interpretations are set to make plank wear less of a headline item. Don’t expect it to vanish.
“It’ll be less of a talking point,” he said. “But the philosophy doesn’t change — you still want at least one end of the car as low as possible.”
That’s the game in 2025: chase the last bit of downforce without sanding your legality plank into a postcard. McLaren learned the hard way in Vegas. Williams’ lead man just wants to be sure that if anyone else crosses the line too low, the paddock finds out — every time.
