In the last practices at the Singapore street circuit, the lizard amused the F1 crowd. The bailiff had a hard time catching the fugitive.
In Formula 1, the last practices in Singapore were interrupted for a couple of minutes. Instead of F1 cars, a reptile kept pace on the track. In Singapore, reptiles are familiar from, for example, the years 2016 and 2023, when Red Bull Max Verstappen had to crash with the lizards. At that time, Verstappen’s race engineer named the reptiles after the movie monster character known as Godzilla.
Mercedes star driver George Russell asked on the team radio what the hell was on the track. When the British were told about the varan, the reaction was quite amusing.
– What? It looked like a dragon, Russell said.
Aston Martin Fernando Alonso on the other hand, he wondered about the message sent to him on the team radio that the track would be empty.
– No, it (lizard) is in the middle of the track, Alonso said at the same time as a picture of a monitor lizard on the track was shown on TV.
The TV pictures also showed when the clerk tried to catch the varan but was not immediately successful. The F1 people greeted the situation with smiles. Among other things, an Australian champion driver Daniel Ricciardo the lizard’s escape made me laugh out loud.
The F1 series itself took full advantage of the suspension of practice on social media. The F1 series described the situation as the strangest red flag ever.
– The situation is starting to become unreal, the F1 series described the escape.
In the last practices, the fastest pace was held by McLaren Lando Norris ahead of Russell and his teammate Oscar Piastria.
Sauber’s Valtteri Bottas was, as usual, among the last. He left behind only his teammates Guanyu Zhou.
Updated at 1:42 p.m. Added exercise results.