WATCH: Carlos Sainz’s Las Vegas GP gets off to a rocky start all because of a manhole cover that seems to have gone unaddressed by their $500 million budget
Carlos Sainz had a massive incident during the Free Practice sessions at the Las Vegas GP which has been caused due to the organizers' negligence.
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With a 3.8 mile long race circuit on the famous Vegas Strip, the Las Vegas GP is supposed to the FIA’s final move to make Formula One a household name in the United States. For a long time, F1 was viewed as a European sport that is reserved for the rich and the aristocrats. But that image was done away with when Liberty Media acquired the rights to the franchise from British owner Bernie Ecclestone. Then started the work for making F1 available to all the fans all over the world. And F1’s US takeover is a big step in that scheme.
After a lot of anticipation by the fans throughout the entire season, Las Vegas Grand Prix is finally here. The Free Practice sessions have set sail and the incidences on the new track have started too. Since the racers are not so accustomed to the circuit that Charles Leclerc claims to look “like a pig”, it was expected that they will run into some problems. What came as a shock is that Ferrari racer Carlos Sainz fell prey to the first on-track incident as he rammed into a manhole cover while doing the laps.
Given the humongous $500 million bill that the Liberty Media had to pay for the Las Vegas GP, it would have been expected that they managed to take care of all the manhole covers on the Vegas Strip. Unfortunately, these now seem to have gone unnoticed since one of the manhole covers caused massive damage to Carlos Sainz’s SF-23 floor. The incident has caused the second Free Practice session to get delayed as the workers are now welding the manhole covers to prevent any such mishaps in the upcoming race sessions during the weekend.
Ferrari Boss Frederic Vasseur labels the Las Vegas issue regarding manhole covers ‘unacceptable’
Ferrari have been expecting to fare better at the Las Vegas GP after Charles Leclerc’s disastrous outing in Brazil a couple of weeks ago. The Vegas Strip is supposed to host a race for the first time, so all the drivers are new to the track. Still, the two high-speed straights and the corners are expected to be an advantage for the Ferrari cars. But the expectations fell apart when Carlos Sainz’s car crashed with a manhole cover, damaging his entire floor.
Speaking of the incident, a fuming Frederic Vasseur said it was unacceptable to have such obstacles as a manhole cover on the Las Vegas GP circuit.
We had a very tough one. This will cost us a fortune. We f*cked up the session for Carlos. We won't be part of the FP2 for sure, we have to change the chassis. Okay, the show is the show and everything is going well but I think it just unacceptable for F1 today.Frederic Vasseur said, as reported by Motorsport.com.
As the sessions progress, the Las Vegas GP is supposed to get more difficult as the drivers will have to combat with extremely cold temperatures. It remains to be seen which racer still comes out on top by warding off all the on-track evils to get the winner’s trophy at the first-ever edition of the race in Las Vegas.
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Riddhi Mondal
(1821 Articles Published)