LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend got off to a rocky start on Thursday night.
Only nine minutes into the first practice session, action was brought to the halt when the Ferrari driven by Carlos Sainz appeared to strike a drain cover while speeding down the Strip straightaway.
The car suffered significant damage with Sainz parking his car on the track and walking back to the garage area. The session was stopped while the FIA conducted an inspection of the race track. Esteban Ocon’s Alpine machine was also damaged in the incident.
After repairs to the track, an extended second practice session was run in the wee hours of the morning following a two-and-a-half-hour delay with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc setting the pace.
The 90-minute session was run without any fans in the grandstands as the stands were cleared because of a shift in security staffing around the 3.8-mile, 17-turn circuit on the Las Vegas Strip.
The session ended at 4 a.m. Las Vegas time.
Leclerc turned the best lap at 1:35.265 seconds, while Sainz ended up second, .517 seconds behind his teammate.
Fernando Alonso was third for Aston Martin, with Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas rounding out the top five.
“It’s a shame that FP1 ended the way it did, and I feel very sorry for the fans,” Perez noted. “However, I’m sure we will have a good weekend of racing ahead of us. It’s a brand-new track and the grip level is quite low, which does make things a lot more challenging in the car.”
World champion Max Verstappen wound up sixth. Verstappen said the track improved as practice progressed.
“The track was quite slippery, it took a bit of extra time to rubber in due to the minimal running in FP1, but it was evolving and was a bit better toward the end of FP2,” Verstappen explained. “We managed to do our whole run program which was the most important thing today with the disruption. From what we learnt, it won’t be super straightforward to pick the tires for the race.
“The soft was good over one lap, but it was struggling quite a lot on the long run. Even the medium didn’t perform as expected, so there’s still a few things we have to look into to improve our degradation. I think we still look very good compared to the others, but there’s more lap time and management to find.”
Lewis Hamilton, who finished ninth, had a few of his own comments following practice.Â
“I’m so glad we got to run again today. The circuit did a great job to fix the issue we saw in FP1, and we had an interesting FP2,” Hamilton said. “It looks like everyone is suffering from graining and we were running out of tires; I think everyone was in a similar boat. That’s likely due to a combination of a new track surface and the temperature. We are also running a low downforce set-up, so you are sliding through a lot of the slow-speed corners, and some of the high-speed corners too.”
Another practice session and qualifying are scheduled for Friday evening in Las Vegas.