Africa-Press – South-Africa. The first practice session for the Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix was embarrassingly cancelled after a CCTV failure at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
The opening one-hour of running for the weekend was red-flagged after just four minutes when Pierre Gasly broke down in his Alpine.
Only a handful of drivers had posted a lap, with Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton and George Russell among those who had not taken to the track.
The running had been expected to restart as usual following the removal of Gasly’s Alpine, but F1’s governing body, the FIA, blamed “issues with local CCTV infrastructure” for the initial delay.
Not resuming
The suspension in play then became temporary, with the FIA confirming at 14:20 local time (20:20 SA time) that the session would not be resumed leaving an estimated 90 000 spectators short-changed.
The FIA said that the concluding running of the day, which was due to start at 17:00 local time (23:00 SA time), would be brought forward to 16:30 to allow for 30 minutes more running.
An FIA spokesperson said: “The delay will be longer as the CCTV is not synced correctly, and until the issue has been fixed, we cannot run on track.
“This system is a local installation, and they are continuing to work to resolve the problem.
“The clock will continue to run down on FP1, and the session will not be extended as there must be two hours between FP1 and FP2.”
Former driver Karun Chandhok, who competed in 11 grands prix and now works as a pundit for Sky Sports, was critical of the FIA’s decision to abandon the running.
“I feel we needed to get on track,” said Chandhok.
“I would argue that there’s races around the world where they haven’t got CCTV cameras, and they rely on marshal posts to radio incidents in – then you can use the TV cameras to look at it.”
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