Lewis Hamilton and co set for very late finish as Las Vegas GP organisers change plan

The drivers are facing an unprecedented schedule for Friday’s running at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen and co won’t climb out of their cockpits until 3:30am local time on the first day of running for the Las Vegas Grand Prix. This is due to a major rescheduling of the FP2 session following an incident during the first practice session earlier on Friday.

With this being a street race and a new circuit, maximising the efficiency of practice sessions is crucial for the teams, but FP1 lasted a mere nine minutes on Friday following an early red flag.

This red flag was brought out after Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz drove over a loose drain cover valve on the circuit, which was then torn from the track, causing extreme damage to the underbody and power unit of the SF-23.

With the track deemed unsafe without further inspections of all other drain covers on the circuit, FP1 was called short, leading to the scheduling changes in question.

As a result of the reduced running in FP1, FP2 has now been extended from a 60-minute session to 90 minutes, with the new start time being 2:00am local time. Given the longer run time, the second practice session will now end at 3:30am.

Although the teams will have more time to refine their setups before tomorrow’s qualifying session, Sainz and Ferrari won’t be overly comforted by these changes.

Team principal Frederic Vasseur has confirmed that his Spanish driver will not be competing in the second practice session while the Ferrari crew works to repair some of the significant damage to his SF-23.

At the post-FP1 press conference, Vasseur confirmed the current situation by saying, “We had a very tough FP1.” We’ll pay a huge price for it. We messed up Carlos’s session.

FP2 won’t include us, for sure. To set up the car, we have to remove the chassis from the vehicle. Well, the show is the show and all is well, but it just doesn’t seem right for F1 in the modern era.”

Sainz faces a grid penalty for the remaining sessions of the weekend as the stewards later confirmed that the No. 55 car is fitted with a new survival cell, internal combustion engine, energy store, and control electronics.