FEATURE
Whenever a team takes any part off the car, the scrutineers must take the original part to the FIA to impound and Mason jokes:“ We’ ve had to take all sorts of different items up to the FIA and I often say to Jo that with the number of parts that end up in his office, it looks like he’ s building his own F1 car!”
The other role of the scrutineers is in the scrutineering bay itself, and the contents of this top-secret area are constantly changing. Until around five years ago, this was the hub of the operation, with cars coming in one by one for a team of scrutineers to swarm over like ants, using templates to measure all the different parts of the car.
This still happens in the other formulae, but in F1, it is done differently, and Mason explains:“ Since the ground effect cars were introduced and the underfloor profiles changed, they now have a LIDAR, which is a laser scanner. The teams declare all their information to the FIA and the cars can then be brought in and positioned in a precise location.
“ The car gets lifted and put on blocks so it’ s elevated and then a probe connected to the LIDAR is used to measure all around the car, with the output appearing on TV screens in the bay. That allows the FIA to instantly analyse that data and there is a traffic light system which goes green or red depending on whether it’ s in or out of tolerance.
“ Until this year, the FIA had its own lift platform but because of its weight, shipping it around the world using air freight was so significant in cost and carbon emissions that they had to come up with another way of doing things, so the teams now use their own lift equipment, which they all have at the races anyway.”
There is still a traditional weighbridge to measure the weight of the car, but that is now located in the pit lane itself, to make for quick and easy checking. Cars are called in at random, using a traffic light system at the end of the pit lane, and the driver will have to stop short of the weigh platform to get pushed on, weighed, then cleared to drive away.
“ The FIA co-ordinates it, but Motorsport UK will always have three scrutineers that are on standby to help,” continues Mason.“ With the electrical systems on the cars now, we won’ t touch them until the green indicator light on the top is showing. If it isn’ t, we have a set of protective gloves on standby that allows us to move the car or push it.”
Photos: JEP
Scrutineers checking race cars at British Touring Car Championship rounds and the British Rally Championship
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Revolution- October 2025