Interlagos, 2021

F1 teams will “work through the night” as FIA waives curfew due to late arrival of freight

2021 Sao Paulo Grand Prix

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Haas team principal Guenther Steiner says they will have to work through the night to have their cars ready for practice tomorrow following the late arrival of teams’ freight at the Interlagos circuit.

All 10 teams are believed to have been affected by a delay in shipping freight from the previous round in Mexico City to Sao Paulo in Brazil, the scene of this weekend’s race. Steiner confirmed Haas parts including the team’s Ferrari engines plus their tools were late in reaching the track.

A large delivery of freight arrived shortly after 11am on Thursday at the circuit. In order to ensure teams can complete construction of their cars in time for practice at 12:30pm local time on Friday the FIA has waived its usual curfew on work hours for Thursday night and delayed the scrutineering deadline.

“I think the guys just have to work through the night,” said Steiner. “That’s the only thing you can do. I don’t know if we need to work through the night, but it will be for sure a late night.

“All the rest of the regulations has been changed as of this morning, the curfew and the scrutineering times have been all adjusted so that we can still do the event as planned, not change the timetable of the event that that’s the plan. I think that’s achievable now.”

Teams are normally forbidden from having staff associated with the operation of their cars within the confines of the circuit during a nine-hour period overnight before the start of first practice. The stewards confirmed on Thursday this has been waived. They have also been given a 15-hour extension on the deadline to complete scrutineering of their cars, which must now be done three hours before the start of practice tomorrow.

Haas had been able to being set-up of their facilities as garage and hospitality equipment had arrived via sea freight. “We got lucky, also, our IT equipment came with the plane, that is not in the sea freight so we could set that all up,” he added.

“I don’t know exactly which car parts are missing, but for sure the engines were missing, I think the toolboxes were missing – without the toolboxes you cannot work because that is going all in there in the air freight.

“So basically, we couldn’t work on the cars or we still cannot work on the cars, even if some of the parts may be there, we cannot work on them because we don’t have the tools.”

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2021 Sao Paulo Grand Prix

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9 comments on “F1 teams will “work through the night” as FIA waives curfew due to late arrival of freight”

  1. I saw some mention of a regulation that none of the teams were allowed to access their items until all teams freight had been delivered, is this correct?

    1. RandomMallard (@)
      11th November 2021, 18:41

      @djarvis I believe that is indeed a regulation, to equalise the playing field for teams by making sure that some can’t start unpacking, and thus finishing, before the others, allowing personnel either to take a break or, idk, more pitstop practice? I also assume its to stop teams hiring private hauliers to get their freight before the other teams, to prevent rising costs, although I expect the regs forbid that in another article anyway.

      1. @randommallard Thank you for your reply. It is definitely the fairest way and seems the most logical

        1. It is definitely the fairest way and seems the most logical

          Sure, but it is fia you are talking about.

  2. Well they should have a good supply of coffee in Brazil… I wonder if we can expect this to happen more frequently with triple headers becoming the norm.

  3. As a fan I like double and triple headers but I think it wasn’t a great idea to have races one week apart in cities separated by 7k miles as the crow flies. Also, as a Brazilian, I can tell that the logistics infrastructure there is not state of the art, road traffic is horrendous, and lorry drivers were on strike just a couple of weeks ago. I’m actually surprised that tons of freight arrived only hours late.

    1. Money is the King. FOM doesn’t care about staff

  4. You could see as far from São Paulo to Mexico city that this was going to be a problem. I’m stunned that it is possible to ship by sea on a double header.

    1. @peartree
      They probably should have done US and Mexico back to back and put the week gap between Mexico and Brazil. I just feel for the crew members that have to put up with this as this is who it actually impacts. They usually have it hard enough without these logistic delays.

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