Missing on-board camera memory card blunder leaves Williams F1 team with huge €50,000 fine

Legendary F1 racing team, Williams, might have picked up a very respectable points haul at the weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix, but a videography mishap has landed the multi-championship-winning team with a hefty €50,000 fine ($54,000 / £42,000 AU$86,000).

According to the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile [FIA], the punishment was served due to the team's failure to provide stewards with onboard video footage from “forward and rearward facing cameras”. And the reason why? Missing memory cards. That's right, you can have the best front and rear dash cams in the world, but without an SD card, they're pretty useless...

It turns out that the Williams team believed the cameras would come with formatted memory cards already installed by the FIA, with F1 stewards quoting F1 Technical Regulation TD034L: “‘Teams are responsible for ensuring that cameras are fitted with a suitably formatted (...) and empty SD card at least 10 minutes prior to the start of any session”.

The stewards have revealed that a flashing LED on the cameras in question alerted Williams to a potential problem during Free Practice 1 [FP1] and that this was reported, but that the team failed to report the missing memory cards after FP1 had ended.

F1 teams are currently required to supply video footage so the sport’s governing body can monitor the flex of a slot gap in the rear wing, with more flex potentially boosting a car’s aerodynamics. However, it’s been made clear that there is no indication that wing flex in either Williams car is suspected to be illegal.

Williams has since released a statement on X (formerly Twitter), explaining that all required footage was delivered last weekend at the Australian Grand Prix and that the team was running the same wing setup in Shanghai as it was in Melbourne.

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