I heard that comment too but it was odd, because they definitely did have them. You can see the 200m one here on the right of Charles, counting down to 0.
That was a setup issue, though. They were way too conservative on ride height this time because of what happened at COTA, and they tried to bolt on more rear wing to compensate. The result was that they were super draggy and had horrible balance. Vegas isn’t exactly a track that will favor them since it’s a bunch of rear limited corners and straights, but they should be better than at Brazil (not accounting for super cold temps, at least).
The cars have had a plank on the bottom made from Jabroc (a beechwood and resin material) ever since Senna’s accident to prevent them from running too low, which can cause sudden loss of downforce and therefore a crash. This plank is supposed to be a minimum of like 9mm. If it’s less than that, it fails the technical regs. Because of only having one practice session and a bumpy track, it looks like some teams were a little too aggressive with the ride height, and the planks wore too much. Only 4 cars were checked and 2 failed, from different teams, so it’s likely there were several others, but we won’t know. Example of plank:
They probably should, but these are just part of the random post race checks, so [emoji2369] . I’d bet the other cars have already started to be torn down anyway.
Looks like Charles and Lewis will probably be DSQ due to plank wear. They checked 4 cars and those two were out of spec. That’s what a bumpy track and one practice session gets you.