Expensive misunderstanding: The FIA has fined Williams because no memory cards were inserted in the new rear wing HD cameras.
The Williams team will be fined for a rule violation in Friday practice at the 2025 Chinese Grand Prix. However, the curious breach of the rules was not due to an illegal rear wing or other technical tricks, but to missing memory cards in the new cameras that the FIA introduced to check the flexibility of the rear wings.
For Shanghai, the FIA has tightened the rear wing rules even further and reduced the permitted flexibilities. To monitor this, the association uses rear-facing HD cameras that film the rear wing. At least in free practice. Cameras that are used solely by the rule enforcers and are not part of the international TV broadcast.
The memory cards used in these cameras must be handed in to the FIA by the teams at the end of the free practice session. But at Williams it was discovered on Friday that no memory cards had been inserted at all. A misunderstanding for which the team now has to pay a fine of €10,000.
Technical Directive TD034L states: “The teams are responsible for ensuring that the cameras are equipped with a correctly formatted (FAT32 or exFAT) and empty SD card at least ten minutes before the start of a session in which they are to be used.”
However, Williams assumed that the cameras would already be supplied with SD cards provided by the FIA. “No checks were made to ensure that this was actually the case,” the FIA race commissioners stated in their judgment. “The team apparently referred to an email from the FIA’s technical delegate to a team member suggesting that the teams could also use their own SD cards. The team stated that they had assumed that the cameras they had installed were equipped with FIA SD cards.”
But during the first free practice session, a mechanic noticed a red flashing light on the cameras and reported it to the FIA. At first, Williams was unsure what the red flashing light meant. And it was too late to insert the memory cards anyway, as they were already in use.
A Williams statement said: “After the session, we reviewed all processes with the FIA and can confirm that the failure to provide the video footage on time was due to a misunderstanding. Our internal processes will be revised accordingly to ensure that something like this does not happen again.”
Williams also emphasizes that this was an oversight and not an attempt to cover up fraud in the rear wing area: “We have no concerns about the legality of our wing. It is the same wing that we used in Melbourne – it is fully compliant with the regulations and we have not had to make any adjustments following the issuance of the new Technical Guideline.”
A claim that is explicitly confirmed by the FIA: “There was no indication that the wings did not comply with the bodywork flexibility requirements set out in the Technical Regulations.” Nevertheless, according to the association, “TD034L is clear in its statement that the responsibility for inserting the blank SD cards lies with the teams. And it is equally clear that the team did not follow this instruction.”
Williams has to pay a 10,000-euro fine for the procedural error. A further 40,000 euros are suspended on probation until December 31, 2025 and will only be imposed if the incident should recur.
