Alex Albon: I’d rather see every F1 car checked than rely on random plank tests

Alex Albon has said his problem with Formula 1's plank wear saga isn't the rule itself, but instead the way it's enforced. In a perfect world, he'd prefer every car on the grid to be checked after races rather than a random sample.

Debate over the skid block regulations has risen to the surface once again after McLaren's double disqualification from the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Both championship leader Lando Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri lost their points haul after their race under the lights of the Strip due to excessive plank wear.

This follows Ferrari's disqualification earlier in the year at the Chinese Grand Prix - something that resulted in Lewis Hamilton being disqualified.

The Williams driver backs the regulations, but would prefer it if all the cars were checked - something the FIA simply wouldn't have time for following a race.

"Yeah, I mean we could run these things to the deck if we wanted to and have no legality issues, but then we're all finding illegal performance kind of thing," he said. “I think the main thing for me is, I don't like that it's random.

"I'd almost rather have 20 cars get checked every weekend and then you'd have a kind of... in terms of fair game. But it's that kind of random selected version of it which is a bit tricky. But yeah, I mean rules are rules."

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Albon, who is leading his team-mate Carlos Sainz by 25 points, added how sensitive the current regulation cars are to track conditions. For this reason, it's easy to lose performance on a car that isn't optimised.

Alexander Albon, Williams

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images

"These cars are incredible now," he explained further. "We are setting ride heights down to what wind you get for the next day in the race. If you get a headwind into a main straight, it completely transforms your ride heights for the weekend. Especially on sprint weekends or weekends where we have not much running like Vegas, you have to take the safe approach and sometimes you finish on Sunday as a team, kind of kicking yourself because you have hardly any plank wear and you feel like you could have optimised the weekend more. But that's just the way that these rule sets are this year."

Full legality inspections are extremely time-consuming for the FIA and can involve partially dismantling a car. While checking all 20 cars would be the fairest solution, for now, random sampling is a practical compromise in an already compressed race weekend.

The issue won't disappear next year when the new regulations begin.

"It still will be a talking point, I think,” he said when asked if ride heights would be less marginal under the future regulations. "I think it's the philosophy of at least one part of the car, whether it's the front or the rear of the car, being as low as possible generally still applies. So, it will be much less of a talking point, but it will still be there."

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Qatar GP - Thursday, in photos

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