Scrutineering

[dave34m]

James Allen recently had this to say about scrutineering.

"Ever wondered how they test whether the cars are legal? After every race the F1 cars have to be checked over to make sure that they comply with the regulations. But the pre-race legality checks are not carried out by the FIA, they are carried out by the teams themselves. It is up to them to make sure that their car is legal before the action starts. The teams have to ensure that the bodywork fits the dimensional templates supplied in the FIA garage. The cars are weighed, the track width is checked, as are bodywork dimensions like the size of the front and rear wings and the front wing height. Teams have just 10 minutes for each car to check that it is legal. Typically they do this on a Thursday evening. And they had better get it right because once the action starts the FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer can check a car whenever he wants and if it doesn’t comply it can be disqualified.

All the FIA do pre-event is to check that the safety features are in working order, things like the monocoque, the electricity kill switch, the rear light and the fire extinguisher."

I had no idea about that, and I'm not 100% sure it correct. Does anyone have more information about this?

[ashf1mclaren]

i think that before practice there is a check then before and after qualifying and the same for the race, but these are limited by time i guess although i have heard that the FIA will be looking to put cameras in the teams garages, so the FIA can keep the cars under control, these cameras will be monitored by a security company/team and will run in a low quality untill motion is detected when they will switch to high

[RacingManiac]

It makes sense if that is the case. You can be cheating or whatever during the the race, but unless you can somehow made the car legal again after quali and race, all is for nothing. Both after qualifying and the race the car drive straight to parc ferme off the track, so not much time for team to temper with stuff.....

[WhiteBlue]

http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/f1 ... report.pdf

Read the scrutineering report.


Edit: Ooops, they locked it. Sorry.

[pgj]

Why have they done that? Whatever happened openness and transparency? Those reports were very helpful and informative.

[Scuderia_Russ]

This is the same for most categories of motorsport. As already stated, usually in the racing I've done the very least that will be checked are:
-That seat belts are in date and not chafed or worn any where.
-Stickers for marshalls to see where the extinguisher button / pull lever is and electric cut off are affixed in the correct places.
-Race Numbers are correct, in the correct places and of the correct size / colour. -Rain light is switched on then turned off via the electric cut off (this is the most common test) to check the continuity of the cut off circuitry.
-Outside of the U.K. (In Europe anyway.) fire extinguishers must have been serviced within the previous two years and have a validation sticker showing the last service date. (This is not essential for racing in the U.K. but is recommended.)
-If the onboard extinguisher to be used is electronic then the arming box is switched to the test position and the button that fires the extinguisher is pressed. This tells the scruitineer via a series of led lights on the arming box that the wiring circuit has continuity.

...and that is about the very least that will be checked.

In club racing due to its amateur nature scrutineers examine the car further, pushing the brake pedal, ensuring that lock nuts are tight and that bodywork secures correctly which is a good job because I have come across some serious sheds in my time.

The most common post scrutineer checks inlude.

-Taking a fuel sample to ensure the regulation fuel has been used.
-Ensuring that ride height is above the minimum (I've had some hilarious narrow squeaks with this one)
-Ensuring minimum weight is achieved. (It is very satisfying to see that you got the weight to within under half a kilo, especially when others are hovering around ten kilograms over the weight limit!)
-And scrutineers plugging into the car to ensure that we didn't run the engine over a certain rev limit.

Obviously each race series has its own regulations and F1 is no different.

[WhiteBlue]

http://rapidshare.com/files/371971978/a ... report.pdf

Australian scrutineering report for information.

[ESPImperium]

OT: The only report im missing from the last 5 years is Singapore 2009.

Does anyone have it???

BOT: The reports cover pretty much everything needed to know wether the cars are legal. The only thing taken at the end of each race from each car is its weight if it finished, and was classified pretty much. However it is at the technichal deligates discression wether any non-classified cars that finished the race are weighed or not.

[dave34m]

http://rapidshare.com/files/371971978/a ... report.pdf

Australian scrutineering report for information.

Thank you posting that, very interesting reading. I have never seen that report before. Surprising how many parts replaced in parc ferme