17 June 2023 , 17:11
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Calling off first practice at the Canadian Grand Prix was "embarrassing" for Formula 1, according to Fernando Alonso.
Fans turned out in their thousands to get their first glimpse of F1 cars on track on Friday. But they only got about five minutes' worth of that in FP1 before the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve was quiet again.
The red flags were brought out by Pierre Gasly, who suffered a mechanical problem. But what was expected to be a brief stoppage eventually turned out to be the end of the session.
Gasly's Alpine had disappeared off the cameras monitored by race control, alerting them to an issue. The cameras dotted around the track were out of sync which created a safety issue.
The session never got going again but, fortunately, the problem was repaired in time for FP2. An extra 30 minutes was added onto that session, to give the teams more practice and the fans some on-track action to watch.
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But that wasn't enough to improve Alonso's mood. The 41-year-old was clearly unimpressed with the situation as he spoke to reporters in Montreal.
He said: "It was a shame. I think it was not ideal for the teams, but mostly it was for the fans who came very early to the circuit and we were not able to run in FP1. From time to time it seems that we are shooting our feet as a sport. So these things are a little bit embarrassing."
Fernando Alonso felt the situation was 'embarrassing' for F1 (AP)Cameras around the circuit are neither the responsibility of F1 nor of the FIA. The event promoters, in this case the Automobile Club de Ille Notre-Dame and GP Canada, are responsible for the infrastructure around the venue.
In a statement, the FIA explained why the session was not able to continue. It said: "The session restart has been delayed due to issues with the local CCTV infrastructure around the circuit. The local organisers are working to resolve the issue and until that time we can't restart for safety reasons.
"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 the clock will continue to run down on FP1."