Last year’s inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix featured one of the most bizarre incidents after Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari suffered massive damage after going over a drain cover. Consequently of the damage, the Spaniard had to take a 10-place grid penalty, one that both he and Ferrari believed was harsh as there was no fault of his.
A year later, Sainz has looked back at the incident in a much more cheerful way and also cracked a joke about it. After checking a rumor on social media that the straight at which he had his incident was named after him, the 30-year-old hilariously told Marca in an interview,
“That’s not really true (the straight being named after him), but they probably should have. No, I’m joking”.
CCTV footage of Sainz hitting the drain cover in FP1 #F1 #LasVegasGrandPrix pic.twitter.com/VV5O3fmqBT
— Jean (@__JustJean) November 17, 2023
Sainz then reflected on his frustrations from last year and said that he was “clearly unfairly punished”. He feels that if he did not get the 10-place grid penalty that resulted in him starting from 12th, he could have very well won the race, in which he only managed a sixth-place finish. He just hopes that “Las Vegas has something nice in store” for him and Ferrari this year.
Sainz’s recent remarks seem to suggest that he is definitely in much better spirits this time around when F1 visits Las Vegas as last year, his frustrations about the drain cover incident in Sin City also carried on after the season concluded.
“I’ve never been as frustrated as a racing driver, or never been more upset towards the sport than I was in Vegas,” he said in December last year.
For an event that was the most hyped before the 2023 season began, it was an embarrassment for F1, the FIA, and the organizers of the Las Vegas Grand Prix to see an incident like the one involving Sainz and the manhole cover.
What was most shocking to fans was that the organizers of the Las Vegas GP spent millions of dollars to put on a show, but did not do enough to ensure that such an incident did not happen. As a result, this incident indeed was a warning sign for the FIA and the Las Vegas GP organizers as it highlighted the gap in their track safety inspections.
