The possible outcomes of Hamilton and Leclerc's Austin F1 DSQ

Explaining why Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified from the United States Grand Prix to a non-Formula 1 fan makes the entire concept of having a skid block seem almost arcane.

To us dyed-in-the-wool addicts of watching fast cars go around a circuit, it makes perfect sense: there's a hard-and-fast limit of how low the car can go, and something that can be measured so that a) nobody derives an unfair advantage and b) safety remains uncompromised. "Why not just have a sensor or something?" comes the riposte; after all, F1 is both entertainment and a high-tech industry, akin to an Eastenders special set in the Large Hadron Collider (a world where Alfie Muon runs the Queen Vic).

One supposes that F1 is better suited to physical limits; grass is preferable to track limits deletions, and permaglass planks (not wood, or you'll upset the pedants) are superior to spurious sensors. Wear at the skid block too much, and the rules have been broken. It's been a rule for the past 29 years, famously transgressed by Michael Schumacher and Benetton at the 1994 Belgian Grand Prix - which triggered a suspended two-race ban after his stop-go penalty evasion at Silverstone that year.

Mercedes and Ferrari paid the price for that in Austin, yielding the first skid-wear penalties since all the way back in '94 - Olivier Panis having been the unlucky plank-wearer in Portugal, as Jarno Trulli's Indianapolis 2001 disqualification had been overturned due to an FIA oversight; the Jordan team's hearing had only taken place in front of two stewards, not the required three.

Digression aside, the point is that it's rare to see a team make such a mistake with ride heights with modern methods of precision to wear out the rear part of the skid. To see another team do the same thing in the same race? It's more than mere coincidence.

And there are external factors at play, although the FIA quite rightly noted that the other cars that it tested (Lando Norris and Max Verstappen) had been able to stay within the limits of permitted skid block wear. It was possible to do, and the responsibility had lain with the teams to adapt to the prevailing conditions at Austin, but it's a cautionary tale for next year.

The reduced track time afforded to teams with the sprint schedule meant Ferrari and Mercedes missed the mark on ride height

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Minimal practice time for a sprint weekend was one such contributory factor. Rather than have a full Friday (and a Saturday morning) to properly assess the car and make changes, three hours' worth of preparation had to be condensed into one.

One hour of stop-start running appeared to have not clued Mercedes and Ferrari in with regards to the degree of plank wear expected over the course of the race. Even if the full race fuel load compressed the suspension even slightly, that offers another avenue for the skid to drag along the road.

There was the case in Baku's sprint weekend this year when Alpine pulled Esteban Ocon out of his 12th-placed grid position and into a pit-lane start to tinker with the set-up, believed to be for concerns over skid block legality upon the bumpy streets of the Azerbaijani capital. It may well have been the case that Mercedes and Ferrari considered similar and attempted to ride it out, or simply had no notion that the skid would wear quite to the extent it managed over the 56-lap Austin race.

Surface bumpiness was also a further issue, one that seems to be getting worse by the year at the Circuit of the Americas. Shifts in soil structure underneath the track have been cited as the key culprit, with a high percentage of clay soil propping up the Texan tarmac.

The FIA's track data could be used to determine which circuits are the most suitable to race on with limited practice. If it's known that COTA or any other venue is built on malleable foundations, then it can be assumed that they require the full three-hour suite of practice sessions

The high level of plasticity when wet can cause sinking and cracking in structures built on top; new bumps seem to appear on a yearly basis at COTA, rendering it increasingly difficult to prepare for. Resurfacing works have attempted to deal with changes in topography, but this is tantamount to a large-scale game of Whack-A-Mole; one bump is dealt with, another emerges...

Not enough time to prepare on a changed track surface has likely yielded Mercedes and Ferrari's downfall but, again, the rules are perfectly clear - and they're bang to rights. Many have been calling for reduced practice sessions over the years to induce such mistakes, with the theory that less-prepared teams will offer more variance in results.

There's merit to that argument but, in instances such as this, it feels somewhat cheap when the goalposts have quite literally moved. Thus, there are measures that the FIA and F1 can introduce to make situations such as this fairer.

The current format of the sprint weekends makes it difficult to realistically open parc ferme regulations, meaning that teams and drivers have to take a heavy hit of a pitlane start if a change does need to be made. In the case of being on the limit with ride height, options after qualifying are thus: fix it and start from the back, or don't fix it and risk disqualification. Taking both the 'right' and 'wrong' - per the regulations' intent, at least - courses of action are similarly problematic.

Should teams be able to make changes on the grid in a monitored fashion to avoid a repeat?

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If F1 is to persist with sprint weekends, the FIA can introduce a fully monitored period pre-race for last-minute tweaks. Think the "tinkering time" offered to competitors in Scrapheap Challenge; anything that requires a suspension set-up tweak can be enacted in that time without having to withdraw a qualifying result.

Bigger changes to actual technical specifications will still require a pitlane start, but anything that can be done to a defined part of the car with a spanner or a socket wrench is fair game. The FIA then monitors what changes are made, and then these are released with the other stewards' documents for complete transparency.

The other simple solution is to use the FIA's track data to determine which circuits are the most suitable to race on with limited practice. If it's known that the Circuit of the Americas or any other venue is built on malleable foundations, then it can be assumed that they require the full three-hour suite of practice sessions.

Each circuit can be measured against a metric of year-on-year topographical shift, if such a thing exists, and put into a table; any below the threshold are either inspected further, or discarded entirely. That said, COTA's Saturday race was so drab that it would be surprising to see F1 select it as a sprint weekend again.

And then there's the age-old question of stewards' decisions taking so long to ratify after the end of the race. There was, according to the FIA documentation, two hours between the skid blocks being detected as below the thickness threshold and the official disqualification of Hamilton and Leclerc from the race - almost four hours from chequered flag to black flag. Part of that time was to allow the teams and drivers to explain the situation but, in the instance of plank thickness, there is a clear regulation and a clear precedent set.

Although certain decisions can be expedited, actually it's better that the FIA makes the correct decision rather than the quick one. After all, the previous example of Trulli's 2001 skid block disqualification may have been the right decision to make - but opting for the quick way out while all stewards were not present ensured the decision was inadmissible.

The FIA's hasty call to boot Trulli out of the 2001 US Grand Prix is a cautionary tale

Photo by: Clive Rose / Motorsport Images