Technical What is the scrutineering process?

[The Pits]

I remember in the good old days of club racing, when I used to stand in a queue for ages to get the car scrutineered for my friend, and until the sticker was on the car, it was not allowed to race.

I have to admit to being a little confused as to the processes which are employed in F1 in order to ensure the legality of the cars.

Are all the cars checked completely at every race? or is it only some cars at some times? after the race for example? Who is it who actually runs the ruler over the cars?

It seems to me that once again, the way the regulations are enforced is itself mired in complication.

Please can someone shed some light on this for me!!

Ta!

 

[The Artist.....]

As far as I know, there is a scrutineering rig, which is used to check the legality of cars on a Thursday (tests heights, widths, weights etc etc).... However more formal checks are often taken after qualifying and after the race- hence how events like the saucers being disqualified after the race in Melbourne last year....

 

[the_roadie]

Article 24 of the FIA F1 Sporting Regulations specifies that all cars must be scrutineered between 10:00 and 16:00 three days before the race (four for Monaco) in the garage assigned for the competitor.
24.3 says that no car may compete until passed by the scrutineers.

There are other scrutineering opportunities conditions and options throughout the race weekend up to and including post-race parc ferme.

EDIT - what I meant to add was that if a car's on the track it's been scrutineeered and has passed as being in conformance with all the applicable rules.

 

[Brogan]

Do they check every single car at the start of each weekend though?

I know for example that they do full and spot checks during and after.

Here's the document for Malaysia for example: http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/f1_media/Documents/mal-race-report.pdf

 

[The Artist.....]

Do they check every single car at the start of each weekend though?

I know for example that they do full and spot checks during and after.

Here's the document for Malaysia for example: http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/f1_media/Documents/mal-race-report.pdf

Certainly it was true that they checked every car for certain aspects- and no car was allowed to run until they had passed scrutineering (and if there were any major changes to a car, then it needed re-scrutineering)!

 

[the_roadie]

Do they check every single car at the start of each weekend though?

I know for example that they do full and spot checks during and after.

Here's the document for Malaysia for example: http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/f1_media/Documents/mal-race-report.pdf

Yes, as I said from just having looked up the Sporting Regs and as The Artist confirmed.
In post-race (the document you gave a link to) it shows that all cars were subject to some checks (like weights, software, serial numbers, having tyres fitted at the 3-minute board and so on), and random numbers of cars were subjected to other more rigorous tests.
I think that over a season it evens out as to which cars have been subject to any of the 25 or so tests listed in the Technical Delegate's post-race Report. In each race any one of the 25-odd tests can be applied to 2, 3, 4, 6, 10 or all cars.

 

[The Pits]

And in Australia, the Sauber cars were excluded after the race, despite almost certainly being illegal from first practice onwards, so they were allowed to compete, despite not being legal, and had they known before the event, they may have been able to take mitigating actions.

 

[Slyboogy]

As far as I know, there is a scrutineering rig, which is used to check the legality of cars on a Thursday (tests heights, widths, weights etc etc).... However more formal checks are often taken after qualifying and after the race- hence how events like the saucers being disqualified after the race in Melbourne last year....

saucers got disqualified in Melbourne?



Sorry but that had me laughing for a while, well it's 3am here.

 

[sportsman]

Not a comprehensive report but gives general outline of scrurineering

 

[Bill Boddy]

During the pit lane walks on Thursdays you see at least one car from each team being wheeled up for weighing. Whether they always do both cars I don't know, the walk doesn't last long enough.