Luke’s Weekend Take – Las Vegas GP 2023

We take a look now at FP3 on Saturday for most of the fans but was still Friday in Las Vegas for the drivers. Ferrari seems to be liking the conditions of the track as they are putting down some impressive pace so far in free practices. In FP3 we see a bizarre incident between Magnussen and Leclerc as we Magnussen going through the chicane and Leclerc goes over the kerb on the inside to overtake him as Magnussen went slow on the apex, so Leclerc had to take avoiding actions. Max Verstappen on his first flying lap in FP3 had to take to the runoff as he was put off by an AlphaTauri already in the runoff and Verstappen decided to take precaution and go off as well slower rather than risking locking up and get into an incident. With 6 mins to go into the session we see a wheel just roaming on track and shortly after discovered that it was Alex Albon who lost his rear left wheel. He went in too hot at Turn 5 – not for the first time having been off there a few laps earlier – but this time didn’t bail out and ran wide and hit the wall on the outside. Damaged the left rear and then the tyre detached from the wheel. This incident brought out the Red Flag and the session was not resumed given that there was only 4 minutes left. George Russell topped the leaderboard in the last free practice session ahead of qualifying followed by Oscar Piastri and Logan Sargeant. Lance Stroll was summoned to the stewards after the session for overtaking under Yellow Flags and was later confirmed that he will pick up a 5 grid penalty despite the claims of Stroll saying that he had his head down looking at the dash and didn’t see the flags. It was later confirmed that Stroll did slow down so no additional penalties for him.

We head now into qualifying, and it seems that the biggest struggle is to keep the tyres within the desired temperature window as the track temperature at the start of qualifying was that of 17 degrees. Lando Norris got blocked by Sergio Perez in Q1 and Perez might be getting in trouble with the stewards as well as it was a clear block. In Q1 we also see that a few drivers were having some track times deleted but most of them were slow laps in order to get out of the way for fast drivers, so it wasn’t anything too serious. In Q1 we see Lando Norris, Esteban Ocon, Zhou Guanyu, Oscar Piastri and Yuki Tsunoda eliminated. It was a big shock to see both McLarens out in Q1, but they were struggling to get their tyres in the right temperatures. Stroll will also be investigated after the session for failing to slow down under yellow flags again. Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, Alex Albon, Zhou Guanyu, Pierre Gasly and Valtteri Bottas were also noted for failing to adhere to the maximum delta time. There could be some penalties coming here as well given how messy it looked between a number of drivers at one point. Funnily enough, this was all cleared up and no penalties were handed out.

In Q2 for the first runs we see Ferrari being beat for the first time really as Sergio Perez manages to go 0.001 seconds faster than Leclerc and later in the session Fernando Alonso also manages to go faster by nearly a tenth which shows how much track evolution there is here in Las Vegas. This didn’t last long as on a fresh set of softs, Leclerc was able to go 7 tenths faster than Verstappen’s time and Sainz only managed a time 5 tenths slower than his teammate. With 3 mins to go Perez goes into the pits and into the garage which with him being in 6^th place seems quite risky as he could potentially be knocked out here. At the end of Q2 we lose Lewis Hamilton, Sergio Perez, Nico Hulkenberg, Lance Stroll and Daniel Ricciardo as Hamilton couldn’t go faster while it was a bad strategy call by Red Bull who decided to pit Perez 3 mins early when he was in 6^th. Another 2 shock exits in Q2 which seems to be shaping up to be a good race if we have a disrupted grid with Carlos Sainz being pushed back 10 places.

For the final 10 positions it was all or nothing in Q3 for the drivers so that they get the best starting position ahead of tomorrow’s race. One to note was that only 2 teams had both cars into Q3 and that was Ferrari and Williams which is quite impressive from the Williams team. Leclerc takes provisional pole in the first run but only by 0.022 seconds to his teammate, Verstappen was in 3^rd 0.083 behind Leclerc. Ferrari should aim to get a 1-2 with Sainz in first so that he only drops to 11^th while Leclerc will get promoted to Pole in the race tomorrow. Leclerc improves on his last lap improving his time and chance to take pole, Verstappen wasn’t improving and backed off into the pits and 3^rd is the best he could do here. Sainz couldn’t beat his teammate and will be starting in 12^th tomorrow as Ferrari take 1-2 in qualifying. For qualifying then we se Charles Leclerc taking pole, followed by Carlos Sainz, Max Verstappen, George Russell, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Logan Sargeant, Valtteri Bottas, Kevin Magnussen and Fernando Alonso.

Will Leclerc be able to convert his pole into a win here in Las Vegas GP? I for one sure hope so as we have seen Leclerc take pole multiple times but wasn’t able to convert it come race day. Tomorrow should be an interesting race given that the grid is really mixed up which should give us some good action.