2023-11-20 09:08:41
Ferrari intends to follow up on the incident that occurred during the first free practices of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, but these will be private discussions with the organizers. The Scuderia also wants light to be shed on the entire course of events, with Frédéric Vasseur ensuring that he is more annoyed by the management of the affair than by the incident caused by the manhole cover itself. .
THURSDAY, Carlos Sainz had destroyed his car on this element having detached from the ground, causing considerable damage as well as an inevitable penalty of 10 places on the starting grid due to the use of a new element of the power unit.
Returning to the course of the accident, the Frenchman says more about the reasons for his anger. He indeed feels that what happened to his driver was avoidable, pointing to the minute that elapsed between the yellow flag waved by the marshals and the red flag which definitively interrupted FP1 once Carlos Sainz’s accident occurred. .
“We should also discuss the circumstances of the accident”he says. “Because it’s not just about a plate coming off, but also the fact that there was a minute between the yellow flag and the red flag. That means that when they waved the yellow flag , they had seen something on the track. And they took a minute before putting up the red flag. I think that’s too much.”
“The main problem for me in this matter is that when we put up the first yellow flag, it means that we saw something; we don’t put up a yellow flag in anticipation. That means that the one who waved a yellow flag, and who also displayed it on my screen, where it comes from the race direction, saw something. Then they took a minute before bringing out the red flag, in a straight line, where there is a metal part and you are at 340 km/h.”
“Once again, I am more upset by the way it was handled than by the incident itself. The incident, we have had precedents in the past, even in Monaco, which is probably the top of the street circuits. They had this kind of incident two or three years ago. We experienced it in Malaysia, we experienced it twice in Baku at the pit entrance. It’s something difficult to anticipate and resolve.”
Discussions for compensation
We remember that after the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix, Haas had reached an agreement with the Sepang organizers to obtain compensation after a violent accident including Romain Grosjean had been a victim while passing over a loose manhole cover. A precedent that Ferrari will logically look into. “This will be a private discussion, which I will have with those responsible”confirms Frédéric Vasseur.
“There is no provision in the budget or in the cost cap to exclude accidents”adds the director of the Scuderia. “Certainly there are a lot of additional costs. The harness was damaged, the gearbox was damaged, the battery was damaged, the engine died. There are a lot of financial consequences, on a sporting level, and even on the stock of spare parts. On a budgetary level, it’s certainly not simple.”
The most direct impact, apart from the reconstruction of a single-seater last Thursday night for Carlos Sainz, is the need to send a new spare chassis from Maranello to Abu Dhabi for next weekend. Enough to motivate the Italian team to put the subject on the table for future meetings, without necessarily having high hopes. “There will be a discussion. A decision is something else”tempers Frédéric Vasseur.
Comments collected by Adam Cooper
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