Mercedes and Ferrari are among the teams confirming tweaks to their floors in response to a new FIA technical directive, with Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur calling the approach “strange”.

On the eve of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, a report emerged from Auto Motor und Sport claiming that to protect the skid blocks – considering their vulnerability to wear in a regulatory era where the cars work best as low to the ground as possible – some teams had been exploiting a grey area to protect the fastening screws.

Ferrari, Mercedes and Alpine all make floor tweaks

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Blackstock

Running insulation around the skid block and the screws, it was claimed ’50 per cent’ of the teams have used this method in order to tap into extra downforce by running lower, but still pass FIA inspections, with the FIA-mandated plank thickness of 10 millimetres required to be at least 9mm after wear.

It was added that the FIA issued a technical directive going into the Las Vegas GP to close this grey area after Red Bull ‘pointed out to the FIA that the trick was illegal’.

Vasseur insisted that the Ferrari floor was legal, but with his team only 36 points behind Constructors’ Championship leaders McLaren with three rounds to go, he wants this to be where his team are placing their focus.

“Yes, we had to make a change,” Vasseur confirmed when speaking to media, including PlanetF1.com, in a Las Vegas GP press conference, “but we have also the confirmation before this that the plank was legal from the FIA.

“I think it was the right attitude for us not to fight, because I want to stay focused on the championship and not on this kind of discussion. But the approach was strange.”

Mercedes have also been forced to make alterations due to the technical directive.

“Yeah, we had to change the way we run the floor,” team principal Toto Wolff confirmed.

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And Alpine – who rose to P6 in the Constructors’ standings after a double podium last time out in Brazil – are in the same boat.

“Yeah, we’ve had to make a little change,” said team boss Oliver Oakes, “but I’ll be really honest, I don’t know the rest of it.”

The 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix marks the second running of the event, with Max Verstappen winning the inaugural race last season. The Red Bull driver returns to Las Vegas knowing he will become a four-time World Champion if he is 60 points or more ahead of Lando Norris after the race. The current gap is 62.

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