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Las Vegas Grand Prix: First practice canceled after drain cover damages Carlos Sainz's car Sainz isPrev TopicNext Topic
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Las Vegas Grand Prix: First practice canceled after drain cover damages Carlos Sainz's car
Sainz is now facing a 10-place grid penalty in Sunday's race
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F1 will not crack America with this Las Vegas grand prix clown show
Oliver BrownFri, November 17, 2023 at 7:36 AM PST·5 min readThe Las Vegas timings have kept teams up until the small hours of the morning - EPA/Caroline BrehmanThe night of November 16, 2023 deserves a place in Formula One’s hall of infamy. It was not just that the first on-track action of a £400 million spectacle lasted all of eight minutes, when Carlos Sainz had his Ferrari chassis trashed at 200mph by a loose manhole cover. It was the fact that almost four hours later, fans were left shivering in the Nevada desert chill with nothing to watch, the scream of the engines replaced by the plaintive sound of Don’t Leave Me This Way over the public address system.
Max Verstappen is right: the Las Vegas Grand Prix, F1’s ultimate exhibition of style over substance, is a clown show. The hapless charade under the lights wrapped up a little after 4am local time, in front of bleakly empty grandstands, after second practice became – due to “logistical considerations for our fans and staff” – a fan-free affair. A few diehard insomniacs watched the action from a multi-storey car park opposite the Sphere. Long-suffering mechanics faced the prospect of still working at daybreak.
The few fans who remained after first practice were sent home before second practice - EPA/Étienne LaurentAn event this breathlessly hyped could not afford to over-promise and under-deliver. Zak Brown, the McLaren chief executive, had billed it as the “largest sporting event in the world this year”. Well, for a start, it is not even the largest motor race in the United States. But before Brown’s hyperbole could be properly tested, spectators who had paid at least £400 a throw to enjoy the first session were treated to the sight of marshals inspecting manholes for an hour. By the time the whole grisly farce wound up at dawn, anyone with sense had long since repaired to the blackjack tables.
It is hard to overstate how ghastly a PR misfire this is for the sport. F1 sabotaged itself in similar style in 2005, when only six cars started in Indianapolis amid a row over tyre safety, and it took a decade for the sport’s image in the US to recover. Everything about this week in Las Vegas has been designed to purge the memories of the past, with extravagant drone shows a far cry from F1’s last visit to Sin City 41 years ago, when the circuit extended no further than the Caesar’s Palace car park. But even with a bottomless budget, the occasion has descended into familiar slapstick, with officials devoting more time to promoting a Kylie Minogue concert than to ensuring the race-worthiness of the track.
Frederic Vasseur, the Ferrari team principal, was rightly furious. “Unacceptable,” he said, aware Sainz could have been killed in sustaining such extensive and avoidable damage at such high speed.
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Inauspicious F1 StarTrack water valve; issue; car damaged; session without fans
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Las Vegas Hi Speed Bumps Formula 1 Racing
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Your title should have been "F1 says FU to fans"
Cause if you F1 you might as well "F" em all!
