Carlos Sainz and Ferrari had an unfortunate start to the inaugural Las Vegas GP as the Spaniard was left stranded on track during the first practice session leading to an early red flag. The floor of his SF-23 had been damaged after he ran over a loose water valve cover, leaving Sainz without power.
Ferrari had to make a whole host of changes which includes the likes of the survival cell, internal combustion engine, energy store and control electronics. All of this resulted in Sainz being slapped with a 10 place grid penalty, which means that the former McLaren driver would be starting the race from P12.
Target 1’fila con migliori possibilità di successo ok, ma soprattutto ~1.5M$ di danni esclusa la PU Considerando che con il BC i team allocano 15M$ per certe aree sviluppo (e riserve) siamo a una penalità del 10% senza alcuna colpa.
L’incazzatura nn passerà facilmente a Vasseur… pic.twitter.com/V2AvQN6EKp— Giuliano Duchessa (@GiulyDuchessa) November 18, 2023
As per F1 expert Giuliano Duchessa, the grid drop isn’t the only way Ferrari will be suffering. Since the Maranello outfit had to fix their car, it cost them around $1,500,000 excluding the new Power Unit.
The teams have a fixed budget cap of $15,000,000 for certain development areas, this means 10% of their budget would already be gone. The worst part about the same is that they would lose 10% of the cost cap through no fault of their own. Duchessa believes that team principal Fred Vasseur would be extremely angry with F1.
Things have been going wrong at the Las Vegas GP more than fans could have predicted
As per a recent report by Motorsport.com, the stewards spent more than two hours deliberating whether on the whole issue and whether Sainz should actually be given the penalty. However, as it turns out, the stewards explained that they would have dismissed the penalty if they had the authority.
However, they said, “Article 2.1 of the Formula 1 Sporting Regulations obliges all officials, including the Stewards, to apply the regulations as they are written.” And therefore, Ferrari ended up with a punishment for something completely out of their control.
F1 fans at Las Vegas today:
– Spent thousands to be there
– Saw 9 minutes of FP1
– Waited HOURS for next session
– Kicked out just before FP2 starts
– F1 themselves haven’t apologised
– Probably not getting a refundI feel so bad 😞
— Matt Gallagher (@MattP1Gallagher) November 17, 2023
Turns out, this isn’t the only thing that went wrong with the Thursday practise sessions. The FP1 chaos meant that F1 needed to check on over 30 water valve covers around the circuit so that a similar incident can be avoided.
However, this meant that FP2 got delayed for over two hours and things got even worse when fans weren’t allowed entry for the second practise session. This left fans absolutely furious and even Verstappen spoke on their behalf and expressed how he would have been absolutely enraged if something similar happened to him. All in all, things have been going extremely wrong at Sin City – more than fans could have expected.
