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Lawrence Edmondson
The second practice session for the Las Vegas Grand Prix was red-flagged twice on Thursday evening due to concerns over a loose maintenance cover near Turn 17.
The stoppage mirrored a similar incident at the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix two years earlier, during which a water valve cover on the Strip came loose and Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari suffered damage to its underside.,
The 2023 incident resulted in the first practice session ending early and the second practice being delayed until the early hours of the next morning.
Thursday’s first stoppage came as a precaution after a trackside marshal expressed concern that a maintenance cover appeared loose.
The suspension of the session allowed race control personnel to visit Turn 17 and inspect the maintenance covers, with the FIA issuing a statement 15 minutes later that it was “confident that everything is in a suitable condition to restart the session.”
However, in the closing stages of the session, a second red flag was raised amid more concerns over the cover, ultimately leading to a second practice timeout.
“Some race control personnel remained on site when the session restarted,” an FIA statement said after the second red flag. “They reported that the cover of the manhole was shaking as cars passed over it, due to which the session had to be ended due to danger. Further inspections are underway.”
Loose maintenance covers are not uncommon on road circuits and become unfixed due to the forces generated beneath F1 cars, which are designed to generate low pressure and drag the car on the track.
Although the premature end of Thursday’s second practice ended F1’s schedule for the evening, the F1 Academy was able to run its qualifying session 32 minutes after the end of FP2 with only a two-minute delay from the scheduled start time.
