'Absolutely nothing': Star fumes over 'unacceptable' F1 issue as fire ...

The first practice session and sprint qualifying at the Chinese Grand Prix were both interrupted by a small fire in the same spot at the edge of the track at Shanghai International Circuit on Friday.

On Friday afternoon, red flags were shown about 15 minutes into the practice session when a patch of grass near turn seven caught on fire.

The Sky Sports commentators were left baffled by the blaze, unable to decipher what caused the fire.

“I don’t think I have ever, ever seen grass catch fire by the side of a Formula 1 track,” David Croft said. “It’s a very small grass fire at the moment. I have no idea how that would have happened.”

Stewards sprinted onto the track and extinguished the flame, with the practice session resuming a few minutes later.

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But it was deja vu in SQ1 later in the day when yellow flags were forced out due to another blaze in the same spot.

“It’s on fire again, unbelievable!” Nico Rosberg said on Sky Sports.

“In the corner there’s a big bump on the ground and all the cars are launching big sparks from under the car, and the wind is pushing the sparks into the track at that point and putting the grass on fire.

“We’ve never seen that before.”

Meanwhile, Yuki Tsunoda was eliminated from SQ1 with the second-slowest time of the session, while VCARB teammate Daniel Ricciardo progressed with a time a whopping half-second quicker.

“That is exactly what he needs to be doing so this is a great session for him,” Rosberg said of Ricciardo.

Tsunoda was not happy with his elimination and voiced his anger over team radio.

“There was zero grip. Honesty,” he said.

Earlier, it was frustration for Gasly who blew up when the session came to an end for not learning anything about the circuit.

As he entered the pits he vented to his pit crew: “This is not acceptable, I haven’t learned anything. Absolutely nothing,” Gasly said.

The issue over the limited on track time was raised before the F1 world landed in Shanghai with Max Verstappen blasting the call to make it the first sprint race on the calendar.

“Yeah, it’s very smart to do that,” Verstappen said.

“It’s not great to do that because when you have been away from a track for quite a while, I think you never know what you’re going to experience, so it would have been better to have a normal race weekend there.

“On the other hand, it probably spices things up a bit more, and that’s maybe what they would like to see.

“But purely from a driving and performance perspective of the sport, I think it’s not the smartest thing to do. We’ll see what we get there.

“I always loved driving there, so hopefully we can hit the ground running as well as we can, and hopefully we don’t need to fine-tune too many things on the car.”

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Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll registered the fastest time in Friday’s practice session, closely followed by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in second and third respectively.

F1 returns to China for the first time in five years after previous editions were cancelled because of the pandemic.

“It’s been crazy over the last week and a half since I came back from Japan,” said Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu, who hails from Shanghai.

“I can’t wait. I know there’s going to be a mix of emotions going into this weekend.

“Especially on Sunday when the national anthem will be going and the memories of when I came here as a youth will come back.

“But the most important, critical thing is to do the right job and to score points.”

Zhou has been an F1 driver since 2022 but is yet to win a race and his Sauber team have not scored a world championship point this season.

But the Chinese pioneer is confident he can give the home fans something to cheer for in either the sprint race on Saturday or Sunday’s grand prix.

“Two opportunities this weekend and we have the potential,” he said.

“The race craft is OK and points are definitely there to be taken. But the midfield battle is super tight between all the cars.”