No, it is not "practically impossible" to do a technical inspection. You seem to think the Formula 1 is the equivalent of your local test and tune night with one dude that looks at something, guesses it isn't a fire hazard, and gives it a pass.
If you have a part that you specifically put on a car to serve as a wear indicator and you can't even bother to check it for wear, why is that part on the car? Do you really think it's that hard to check the thickness of a part? They're made of a composite material. Absolutely nothing needs to be done beyond specifying the cap material to have 1mm of thickness and if that top cap is breached you're done. FFS, this is something your local skate kids are experts at. Just ask them if you need help identifying when a wooden laminate's been worn down.
The plank has existed for nearly three decades and has nothing to do with "porpoising." It's there to enforce minimum ride height rules that have existed way before ground effects were reintroduced.
Because checking planks exactly to 1mm on a multimillon car is comparable to checking a fucking skateboard, sure.
It's very easy to say "WHY THE HELL DID THEY NOT CHECK ALL THE CARS!!!!1!1" in retrospect, but you understand the fact that cars that were not about to be checked were long taken apart before this check even happened. Heck, who knows, maybe they have already been packed in trucks and on the way to Mexico.
The fact that 50% of the cars didn't pass is fucking unprecedented. Is FIA supposed to predict the future or something? Or are they gonna learn from their mistake and perhaps change their prosedure, something that they pretty consistently done in the past.
Now it is true that the teams had only 90 minutes to prepare and having parc ferme since friday is dumb as hell, but it's up to the teams to not break the technical rules. Redbull and McLaren didn't. Ferrari and Mercedes did. Simple as that.
You fail to understand that the problem is not this time, it's literally every race weekend where a small portion of the cars are checked for compliance rather than all of them.
Yes, the FIA is in fact supposed to predict the future to the best of their abilities. That's kind of what you do as a governing body. That's why you have parc ferme. You predict that the teams will try to cheat their balls off. That's why you have the plank. Because you predicted that teams would try to cheat their balls off. If this part is so important, an external part that you can visually inspect for wear, then there is no question that it should always have been inspected on every car after every race otherwise the whole thing is meaningless. Then again, most things the FIA does are in fact completely meaningless because they can't even enforce their own rules four times out of five.
"But Red Bull didn't break the rules!" You have no idea who broke the rules because the majority of the cars on the grid were not inspected, including Red Bull's other car. That's the problem.
Some changes will come from this. Hopefully they'll finally ditch the stupid fucking plank that no other motorsport, to my knowledge, needs to enforce arbitrary ride height rules.
I suppose you fail to understand the reason why formula 1 has the plank
I suppose you also fail to understand why checking every single part of every single car on the grid every race to ensure their legality every race would be insane and barely possible. Even if not checking all the planks in hindsight seems like such an obvious idea, with this attitude you can extend to literary any part of the car, and would have to, for all of them.
Perhaps you fail to understand that no matter if f1 is the "pinnacle of motorsport", it's lead by humans, who make mistakes. Perhaps you would like the AI to take over the lead?
One thing I do understand is the fact that arguing with you is completely useless and a waste of my time, as you can't get over being a smug dickhead.
It has the plank as a check on ride heights. It was instituted after Ayrton Senna's death, which was caused by the FIA's short-sighted ban on active suspension. The imbeciles that claim it's for porpoising have no clue what they're talking about and need to be ignored. It's almost thirty years old and porpoising is a problem caused by ground effect cars that have only been legal for a couple of years.
Nobody said anything about checking every part. Learn to fucking read. They already extract fuel and weigh the cars. You cannot tell me the FIA doesn't know how to have a wear part manufactured so there's a visual indicator of said wear and then shove a fuckin' camera under the weighbridge. Hey, guess what? This is already a solved problem. Visual wear indicators exist everywhere.
No fucking clue what you're on about with AI. Maybe you're just compensating for your prior ignorance?
I think the issue the user above tried to point out but couldn't is that how to decide which checks should be done everytime for every car. Considering DQs due to plank wear are ridiculously rare(I don't think there was a single DQ in the turbo hybrid era due to greater than allowed plank wear before this one. Feel free to correct me I am wrong), it's reasonable for the FIA to not have that as critical element which is required to inspected for every car. Maybe they could select tracks where this could be an issue (like cota, spa, Baku) and only on those weekends either check all the cars or atleast the lead car from each team for plank wear transgressions.
Edit : Regarding your idea for a plank with different colours at different thicknesses, it may be technically feasible but such a manufactured plank will be far more expensive than the current wooden plank(considering 23 races and 20 cars then it's 460 planks a year so costs will add up real fast). I don't think the FIA will spend money on a policing an issue that occurs so rarely. Maybe the new increased driver fines can be used for this purpose
The plank they have now is a laminate. When you say it will be more expensive, it's literally just a chunk of plywood. Changing wood types partway through would be enough to indicate wear.
This is a solved problem, and is absolutely not expensive.
You fail to understand that the problem is not this time, it's literally every race weekend where a small portion of the cars are checked for compliance rather than all of them.
Yes, the FIA is in fact supposed to predict the future to the best of their abilities. That's kind of what you do as a governing body. That's why you have parc ferme. You predict that the teams will try to cheat their balls off. That's why you have the plank. Because you predicted that teams would try to cheat their balls off. If this part is so important, an external part that you can visually inspect for wear, then there is no question that it should always have been inspected on every car after every race otherwise the whole thing is meaningless. Then again, most things the FIA does are in fact completely meaningless because they can't even enforce their own rules four times out of five.
"But Red Bull didn't break the rules!" You have no idea who broke the rules because the majority of the cars on the grid were not inspected, including Red Bull's other car. That's the problem.
Some changes will come from this. Hopefully they'll finally ditch the stupid fucking plank that no other motorsport, to my knowledge, needs to enforce arbitrary ride height rules.