Mercedes and Red Bull breach rule at Las Vegas GP after chaotic opening day
Mercedes and Red Bull both broke the curfew in the Las Vegas Grand Prix paddock after a chaotic opening day of action in Sin City. This was the first breach for teams this season, meaning there will be no penalties applied as a result of the extra work.
Each team is given two free hits per season when it comes to breaching the curfew in the paddock, which in this case was set to 7:00am local time ahead of FP3 and qualifying later on Saturday.
Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton enjoyed their first outings on the Las Vegas street circuit with the seven-time world champion telling Sky Sports F1 after FP2: “It’s incredibly fast and a lot of fun. I had so much fun today, I’m so glad we got to run again. Not a good FP1 but they did a good job to fix it.
“The car is OK. When we are all out on similar tyres we are not too far off. Everyone is having graining and people are running out of tyres but everyone is on a similar boat.”
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Unfortunately, there was much less for Toto Wolff and co to celebrate after Saturday’s running as Mercedes struggled to extract performance during qualifying for the Las Vegas GP.
Hamilton was eliminated in Q2 on Saturday after late improvements from the likes of Valtteri Bottas and Pierre Gasly knocked him out of the top ten. Despite being half a second down on team-mate George Russell, Hamilton was resigned to his fate, confessing over the team radio that he “couldn’t go faster”.
He has been promoted to P10 for the race thanks to a ten-place grid penalty for Carlos Sainz, who took a new power unit after the FP1 incident, but that result will be of no consolation to the seven-time world champion.
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Red Bull also endured an uncharacteristically tough qualifying session. Sergio Perez was eliminated alongside Hamilton in Q2 following an unusual strategy decision from the team that saw the Mexican complete his final run midway through the session.
Explaining the rogue strategy call, Horner told Sky Sports F1: “He went a little earlier. We only took three sets of soft tyres into qualifying. To try and avoid getting caught in traffic on the last lap, he did the lap a little earlier and was just a tenth short.”
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