The chassis of Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari is damaged and must be replaced with the spare one. But it seems that the impact with the manhole was devastating, to the point that the Cavallino team will also have to change the power unit and gearbox! The manhole that rose on the straight of the Strip has already done serious damage: after just eight minutes of FP1 of the Las Vegas GP, two cars destroyed the bottom of the body and will have to miss the second session. The spare chassis was seen entering the Cavallino garage which is closed by screens.
The driver suffered a bad blow to his back: he is sore, but tomorrow he should be in his place in the car regularly even if not in perfect shape.
The Ferrari driver suffered a gash in the SF-23 after taking off on the cover of a manhole cover which was lifted from its seat as another single-seater passed by, apparently Esteban Ocon’s Alpine which suffered a similar crack.
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari SF-23 stopped on the track after hitting a manhole during Free Practice 1
What failed was the sealing of the manhole to the asphalt with cement: the ground effect, i.e. the suction of the single-seaters, facilitated the lifting of the cover, resulting in a very dangerous situation. Lance Stroll was also forced to interrupt his session after a couple of laps, before the red flag for Ferrari, because there was a problem with the bottom of his Aston Martin AMR21.
Max Verstappen’s prophecy which predicted “99% entertainment and 1% sport” immediately found a concrete application. It must be admitted that this is not the first episode of a session on the track interrupted due to a manhole that opened: it happened in 2016 to Jenson Button in free practice for the Monaco GP with McLaren and it was repeated in 2019 in Baku with George Russell on Williams.
The race management is checking all the manholes scattered along the six kilometers of the route. Of course the start of Las Vegas was certainly not positive…
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