Thursday, 16 November 2023
- Free Practice 1: P7, 1:45.824, 4 laps
- Free Practice 2: P2, 1:35.782, 39 laps
- Carlos Sainz has covered his first 43 laps at the new Las Vegas Strip Circuit on an unusual Friday that was compromised by the manholes of the racetrack.
- In Free Practice 1, the car of the Spanish race driver suffered severe damage after its floor received the impact of a loose drain cover. This forced the cancellation of the session and prompted an inspection of the entire racetrack.
- This track issue forced Ferrari to change the chassis, the engine and the battery of Carlos’ car, and hence he received a 10-place penalty for the Starting Grid.
- Free Practice 2 was pushed back three hours and a half to finish the repair works on the racetrack. The session was 30 minutes longer than usual, 90 minutes in total, to make up for the time loss.
- Carlos completed 28 laps on two sets of Soft tyres and 11 laps on a set of Mediums, dealing with a cold gripless track that proved to be tough for degradation and tyre management. His fastest lap time, 1:35.782, put him second in the standings.
QUOTES:
“An eventful day for us after the problem in FP1 with the manhole. Our guys however did an amazing job. They basically had to rebuild the entire car ahead of FP2 and thanks to them we managed to complete our programme in the second session, so a big thank you to all the mechanics.”
“We seem to be on the competitive side this weekend and I’m looking forward to tomorrow. On the negative side, we have been given a 10-place penalty for Sunday after the manhole damaged, amongst other things, my battery and we had to replace it. I honestly cannot understand it and I think an exemption to the rule should have been considered given what happened, but we’ll have to deal with it.”
COMING UP:
Friday, 17 November 2023
- Free Practice 3: 20:30 local time (05:30 CET)
- Qualifying: 00:00 local time (09:00 CET)
