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A fire at the side of the Shanghai Circuit interrupted the first and only practice session at the 2024 F1 Chinese GP.
Since the race weekend in China had the first sprint race format of 2024, teams only had one free practice session to learn their car's performance on the track. China has not held an F1 race ever since 2019. As a result, teams were not aware of how their cars would perform around the track.
The single practice session at the Chinese GP was further shortened when a patch of grass at turn 7 randomly caught fire. The session was immediately red-flagged and marshals arrived at the scene to extinguish the fire. Thankfully, none of the drivers or cars were affected by the fire. After approximately four minutes, the red flag session ended and the practice resumed.
Since no one was hurt because of the fire, many F1 fans joked about it. Some humorously stated that fans did not expect F1 teams to literally cook on the track and cause a fire.
"When I told you guys to cook I didn't mean it literally," one fan joked
"Who cooked," another chimed in.
"I know we've been told to go into rocket mode this weekend, but not so much," a fan added.
While others were confused as to how the grass randomly flared up during the Chinese GP practice session.
"So weird..." someone stated.
"that's crazy, how did it happen," one fan questioned.
"F1: the sport where grass will catch on fire mid practice," one humorously mentioned.
Max Verstappen shares his views on the resurfaced Shanghai Circuit ahead of the 2024 F1 Chinese GP
Max Verstappen recently talked about the resurfaced Shanghai International Circuit ahead of the 2024 F1 Chinese GP. Speaking to the media, including Sportskeeda, he stated that teams could face the unknown coming into the race weekend, especially in terms of grip.
"Yeah, I think with the new cars, of course, that will be a little bit of an unknown. On the trackside, it looks like they’ve painted it, not resurface. So, I dont know what that does to the grip of the track. So that is something we have to get on top of," Verstappen said.
He added that everyone would get only one practice session to tune their cars for the track. He hoped not to change a lot on his Red Bull RB20 so that he could get a head-start at the Chinese GP.
"Of course, it's the same for everyone but we just to have a good FP1. And hopefully we dont have to fine tune too much on the car. That will, I think, really help our weekend if we hit the ground running and we could win," he added.
Max Verstappen currently leads the 2024 F1 drivers' championship with 77 points.
