Possible new rule: Factory visit without prior notice

There are a lot of regulations within Formula 1 and the FIA is constantly tightening them. For example, the FIA has now said they want to start doing factory inspections of teams without giving advance notice.

The work of people in Formula 1 teams' factories is already subject to a lot of rules. For example, there are already rules about wind tunnel time, CFD testing and, of course, there is a budget cap.

To check whether the teams comply with these rules, the FIA has had the right to make factory visits for a long time. So far, they give those visits a long time notice. This does not seem to be the ideal way to catch people breaking the rules.

Without notice

The FIA head of single-seaters, Nikolas Tombazis, tells Motorsport.com that he wants to move towards a situation where the FIA can be in the factory within 10-15 minutes. "We want to go to basically zero notice. We don't think we should be just entering the door and going in, but we do think it would be right to have a process in place where we can just phone them, and somebody comes out and picks up these people and they can say: ‘I want to go and see the wind tunnel or whatever.’”

The FIA has increased the number of staff doing such factory visits. It should now be possible to visit a Formula 1 team's factory every two/three weeks.