Official F1 Journal Friday Round Up- Las Vegas Strip Circuit

Welcome to the very first Las Vegas F1 Journal Round Up, I wish I cold sayy it went to plan but unfortunately there were issues on and off the track. Calling them teething problems might be minimizing them slightly but lets have a look at the events of today and you can decide for yourselves.......

Practice 1- Night time 16º Air Temp   14º Track Temp

Lance Stroll had the honor of being the first man to take his F1 car out onto the brand new beautifully lite Las Vegas Strip Circuit, followed quickly by the whole grid. In the first 5 minutes we saw Hamilton, Norris & Sainz complete the top 3 until their times were bested by Leclerc, Verstappen & Bottas.
52 minutes to go we saw  Lando Norris take a huge amount of curb at turn 15, as  Yellow Flags began to be waved for a stranded Carlos Sainz, very quickly that Yellow was upgraded to a Red flag after just 9 minutes of running when it was found that the cause of the motionless Ferrari was due to a Manhole cover/its surrounding metal seating, being sucked out of it placement by the aerodynamics of the car and had hit the bottom of the car causing what we would later find out to be a huge amount of damage. 

This unknown to us at the time, had also happened to the Alpine of Esteban Ocon. The session did not resume because of the danger of the incident being repeated and the FIA set about fixing the issue before Practice 2. 
After the session both Alpine and Ferrari reported that the Survival cell(Chassis) of their cars needed replacing with the Ferrari requiring much more extensive repairs, including an energy store, Electronics & a new ICE(internal combustion engine). The ICE unfortunately replacement unfortunately pushed Sainz over his allowance for 2023 and meant that he would incur a 10 place grid penalty for Sunday's Grand Prix despite it being a track issue that caused the damage. 
This incident outside of the damage and possible injury to the drivers also has a big effect on the cost cap with an F1 Chassis/safety cell costing millions it also will have an effect on the fortunes of Ferrari who have great successes at Street tracks  and now have 1 car starting 10 places down on their qualifying position through no fault of the Driver or team. ​

Practice 1 Result 

1 LEC        2 HUL
3 MAG       4 VER
​5 OCO       6 RUS
7 SAI          8 TSU
9 PER       10 BOT
11 GAS     12 HAM
13 RIC      14 ZHO
15 NOR
No time set 
16 STR      17 PIA
18 ALB       19 ALO
20 SAR

Practice 2- Delayed by 3 1/2 hours due to Safety concerns from FP1

Practice 2 started on a very sour note for multiple reasons, there was a 3 1/2 hour delay to the start of the session while the FIA & track staff had to fix  the metal seats that the Vegas manholes are welded into, on the street/track because they were being pulled out of the ground as the cars drove over them, a 10 place grid penalty for Sainz after his Ferrari required a new ICE because of the manhole issue and now to add insult to injury because of a security personnel shortage due to the delay all the fans were kicked out of the Grand Stands and fan areas and no fans were allowed to watch Free Practice 2 when it finally got going. In formula 1 delays to the starts of sessions is par for the course and never has this writer ever seen anything like this be done to fans when this situation arises. Paying fans(who paid an insane amount of money for their tickets) were in some cases force ably removed from their seats just because there wasn't enough security. The mind boggles at the clear lack of forthought in regards to the track and logistics of such an ambitious event.

The FIA added 30 minutes to the session to recover some running for the teams after practice 1 only lasted 9 minutes before the Manhole cover issue meant the session was ended and on a positive note the Ferrari boys had done an absolutely mighty job to get Carlos Sainz' Ferrari built(literally almost from scratch) in time to start the session as Oscar Piastri made his way on to the track to start the session, followed closely by team mate Lando Norris who went deep into turn 7 the first time he went around it but that wasn't his only issue at the beginning of the session as soon after his Mclaren went into 'limp mode',for a short time. The team and Norris managed to fix the issue from the pit wall and allowed him to keep going before soon after being called into the garage and a flurry of work started on the car.
Mean while some drivers were exploring more of the track than they would have liked with Magnussen & Perez bringing out Yellow Flags as they found the run off at turn 12 and Alonso had a similar off at turn 5.

14 minutes in and Lance Stroll went deep at turn 14 and found himself in the runoff area and Leclerc, Sainz, Verstappen, Hamilton & Perez made up the top 5 with both Mclarens finding themselves bottom of the times.
The cars and drivers started to feel comfortable at this new circuit and the times started to fall, there was a mix of Medium and Soft tyres, with the top times being set on the Soft untill Verstappen stole the top spot on his medium compound rubber a couple of minutes later just before the work on Norris'car was done and he was back out to continue his running.

Pierre Gasly received a Black and White Flag for crossing the line at the Pit entry as Alex Albon jumped up the times to split the Ferrari's in 3rd and Norris went 7th with his first flying lap after his 'limp mode' problem forced him to box. At the end of the first half an hour of running  Leclerc and Max had a cheeky little battle around the chicane section while Sainz set the fastest time of the session so far on his Soft tyres. Logan Sargeant also got a black and white flag for crossing the line at the pit entry. 

50 minutes on the clock and Leclerc took back the top spot, Hamilton found his spped going 2nd fastest, followed by Albon who was testing the limits of his Williams around the Vegas track in 3rd before having a big lock up forcing him to pit after destroying that set of tyres. Russell after sitting in the bottom 5 for the session so far set a time good enough for 5th but with 40 minutes to go Alonso in his Mercedes powered Aston Martin went fastest with the top 3 of Alonso, Leclerc and Hamilton being separated by just 0.006 of a second.
With less than half the session to go Verstappen swapped his Medium tyres for the softs and went fastest straight away by 0.047 over Carlos Sainz who went 2nd fastest ahead of Alonso, only the 2 Mclaren's and both HAAS cars running the medium tyres still. But Max's fastest time was short lived as Charles Leclerc became the 1st man to break the 1.35 mark going 0.611 faster than the Redbull. 

George Russull visited the runoff at turn 5 on a brand new set of Medium tyres as Norris shaped up for his first flying lap on the Softs, but didn't seem totally comfortable with the track, only managing 10th fastest. 
27 minutes on the clock Alonso was the closest man to Leclerc after going purple in sector 1 and ending up just 0.097 off the Ferrari time. Bottas set a lap good enough to beat Verstappen's best effort so far, putting his Alfa Romeo into 5th and Alonso found himself in the turn 12 runoff area braking too late and having to bail or hit the wall. 

20 minutes to go Verstappen just didn't have the pace down in 6th, but the Ferrari's just kept getting faster, Leclerc pumped in another brilliant lap of 1.35.265, 0.517 faster than his team mate Sainz. 
As the session started to close the teams took advantage of having the addition tyres granted to them after missing the running in FP1 and we saw some really interesting data collection with some cars choosing to do their long runs on both the soft and medium tyres as well as a few Qualifying simulations. George Russell went off at turn 14 but escaped the run off unscathed but down in 12th with 9 minutes on the clock. Lance Stroll was having a good session in 8th. Sainz again beat Alonso's time to go 2nd fastest but was still half a second down on his team mate, Verstappen chose a used set of softs to do his final runs but didn't improve on his time and stayed 6th. 

The session ended with a domiante display from the Ferrari with Leclerc and Sainz 1st & 2nd but Leclerc 0.517 ahead of his team mate. Alonso had a really solid session but did find himself in the run off a little to often for his teams liking. Perez had a positive day finishing 4th, ahead of team mate Verstappen in 6th, Bottas split the Redbulls in 5th with one of his best FP2's of the year. The Mclaren's had a less than perfect session and ended up 11th & 14th and with Alonso running well they will need to find some pace if they want to keep 4th in the championship.

Practice 2 Result

1 LEC. 1.35.265
2 SAI + 0.517s
3 ALO +0.528s
4 PER +0.820s
5 BOT +0.864s
6 VER +0.918s
7 HUL +1.224s
8 STR +1.231s
9 HAM +1.398s
10 ALB +1.423s
11 NOR +1.599s
12 RUS +1.625s
13 MAG +1.652s
14 PIA +1.722s
15 GAS +1.869s
16 OCO +1.976s
17 TSU +2.147s
18 ZHO +2.391s
19 RIC +2.415s
​20 SAR +2.875s

Let's hope tomorrow is a better day for F1, Liberty, the Las Vegas track and most importantly for the track side fans, who got really let down today!! On to Practice 3 and our first Las Vegas Qualifying.

​Joanna Blackmore
​Write @f1journal.co.uk