Thursday’s gruelling, late-night schedule left paddock, garage staff and drivers sleep deprived for the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
A five-hour repair programme to remove water valve covers from the street circuit pushed second practice back to 2:30am on Friday morning in Las Vegas. The extended, 90-minute session ran until 4am local time, leaving teams with a tight turnaround before third practice and qualifying.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said that it was understandable to have teething problems but that the toll on team staff had been immense.
“First off, of course, there’s going to be many lessons to learn,” he said. “And I think that one of the things we [need to] look at is the running schedule, because it’s been brutal for the team and all the men and women behind the scenes.
“I think everybody is leaving Vegas slightly fucked, one way or another,” Horner continued. “It’s been a brutal weekend for everyone behind the scenes and I think we need to look at how we can improve that for the future.
“During the day, we’re running so late at night, maybe to run it a little earlier in the evening because you’re never going to keep every television audience totally happy.
Horner argued that a US race should be timed for local audiences. “If you ran at eight o’clock in the evening or something like that, it would just be a bit more comfortable for men and women working behind the scenes.”
Zhou Guanyu said that, especially with a packed opening ceremony schedule, Las Vegas had got the balance wrong. “I think in general, my feeling every weekend, especially when we come here, is that there’s quite a lot of activity going on. Maybe a little bit quite extreme, especially after the day we had on Thursday or Friday, whatever day you call it.
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“So it’s not the easiest weekend for everyone, for the whole paddock here, because we never get much sleep,” Zhou admitted. “But it is the first race in Vegas. I think next year they are looking to maybe reduce a little bit Thursday so we can have a bit more time with the engineers and all these other things, more racing than other things.”
Daniel Ricciardo said that Thursday’s delayed running had left staff playing catch-up ever since. “After Thursday, that late session, I feel like I’ve been or probably all of us have been a little bit delirious.”
“It’s kind of felt like a bit of a whirlwind since then,” he…
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