Formula One news

Heavy rain ends free practice early

Heavy rain at Autodromo di Monza ended Friday's first free practice session early. The FIA decided it was not responsible to continue the session with four minutes left on the clock as even most Formula 1 teams saw their pitbox being flooded.

It wouldn't help much...

The Italian Grand Prix weekend got under way at 10.00am at the historic Autodromo di Monza. As most Formula 1 drivers went out in the opening minutes for an installation lap the track was still a bit damp but would soon start to get dry.

After half an hour a number of drivers completed a flying lap with Force India driver Adrian Sutil topping the team sheets. It wasn't for long though when it started to rain again and the drivers out on track struggled to stay on. Kazuki Nakajima and Sebastian Vettel both flew off but managed to get their cars back to the pitbox without any major damage.

With half an hour to go extremely heavy rain started to fall at Monza causing drains to flood in front of the pitboxes. It wasn't much later that the water would even start to enter various pitboxes from the F1 teams, who were not amused. The race stewards red flagged the session with four minutes to go as it was impossible to go out on track again.

The second free practice session will start at 2.00pm local time with hopefully less water.

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