Former F1 team boss Peter Windsor suspects that Lewis Hamilton would have been joined by several other drivers in disqualification if the FIA had inspected more of the cars that started the United States Grand Prix on long first stints.
Charles Leclerc also saw his race result chalked off, with his and Hamilton’s cars having illegally-worn skid blocks by the end of the race.
“This rule testing one car from the top four has been in F1 for many, many years,” Windsor explained in a YouTube livestream. “It’s because they want to save time and it’d take forever to do every car.
“I suppose they could do a slightly larger sample, but that’s the rule. And that’s what they did. In my opinion, if you want to look at who else would have been in trouble, look at the length of the first stints.
“I suspect Daniel Ricciardo would also have had trouble, as would Nico Hulkenberg, and we know Fernando Alonso did have trouble with his floor collapse.”