F1 News: Esteban Ocon Sends Message To Fans After Las Vegas GP Evacuation

“They haven’t seen a car run today and that is obviously not acceptable,” said Esteban Ocon

Speaking on the way fans were handled after a cancelled FP1 session, Alpine driver Esteban Ocon said that the treatment offered to them was "not acceptable" as they witnessed just eight minutes of track action before being asked to leave.

Carlos Sainz's Ferrari struck a loose drain cover that caused a cancellation of the FP1 session. FP2 was then heavily delayed since the circuit went through necessary repairs and a thorough inspection.

The fans stuck around for several hours with the hope that the action would resume on track. Sadly though, they were asked to leave shortly before FP2 got underway. Ocon felt bad for the fans who had paid a huge sum of money for the event, only to be asked to leave. Speaking to the media, he said:

“Obviously I’m feeling sorry for the fans out there.

“Hopefully we’ll catch back up on the show and have some good show for them tomorrow because they haven’t seen a car run today and that is obviously not acceptable.”

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Ocon was involved in the drain hole incident as well, but luckily, his car suffered lesser damage, and he was lucky to have escaped a serious incident. He added:

“I was lucky that the session got delayed because my car was very damaged in FP1.

“So a bit of a crazy-emotion day, I would say.

“Luckily I’m fine, as well, because it could have easily come through the car, the object.”

Adding to the sympathy toward the fans, AlphaTauri driver Daniel Ricciardo said:

“The grandstand situation, obviously that’s a bummer. But I guess if we didn’t do the FP2, then it probably would’ve got scrapped and we just would have gone into FP3.

“So at least like this, maybe the fans got to, at the very least, watch it on TV. We try to be positive, but it’s obviously a difficult situation. 

“But I also don’t want to shit on the sport. It’s the first time here, it’s a massive project and things unfortunately happened. I know no one wanted them to, but I guess they did the best they could with what they had.”