RFID chips have been used in Formula E tires for the entirety of the still-young motorsport, primarily to track the condition of tires, including temperature and tire pressure.
This seems like a massive oversight by the FIA
That doesn’t seem like a severe enough penalty imo
I wonder if the amount being $25k is because it’s Formula E and the series not being nearly the money machine F1 is.
The article didn’t make it clear if they actually used the RFID scanner in a race or just installed it and then were tattled on.
I found a follow up to this, here:
Formula E racer Stoffel Vandoorne says his team wasn’t trying to steal data. Over the weekend, Formula E team DS Penske was caught having installed an RFID scanner in the pit lane that could grab “live data from all other cars” and the team was penalized. Vandoorne accepted responsibility, says Autosport, but said his team wasn’t doing anything others weren’t already: “We were just trying to check what set of tyres others were using, which you can do with a normal camera. The other teams are doing that, they are using photographers in the pitlane. We found a clever way, or an easy way, and we paid a big price for that.”
