Finlay McSporran
Published: 20:33, 29th June 2025
The Irish driver finished second in todays feature race, however this disqualification sees him lose the 18 points that came with it, which is a huge blow for his title aspirations.
He was disqualified because his car was found to have excessive plank wear, which took it below the minimum required thickness of 4mm. This was in breach of the FIA Formula 2 technical Regulations, specifically article Article 3.2.2.
The skid block (plank) is the wooden part underneath a formula car that controls the ride height. It has to be a certain thickness to ensure cars don’t bottom out and lose control, particularly over bumps and kerbs. It can also lead to the proposing effect F1 cars suffered at the start of the ground effect era in 2022.
This is something that teams can exploit by lowering the ride height to gain a performance advantage, but is banned for safety reasons. This is why Dunnes car was disqualified from the race whether it was intentional or not.
The knock-on effect of this is an 18 point loss for Alex Dunne, which sees the gap between himself and championship leader Richard Verschoor grow from what was six points before the disqualification to now 24 points.
In a statement on social media, Dunne said: “Unfortunate to be disqualified after what I felt was one of my best races of the year, these things can happen in motorsport and we have more than enough pace as a team to get it back.”
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