Scott Mitchell-Malm

I am told by some source of the FIA that there were some minor concerns about the number of people that were on there and whether they were going to get everybody off in time.

There were starts and questions about, are we now in a situation where the start's going to have to be delayed?

Because it's not only shuffling people off the grid.

There's also the element that the pit lane is the other side of the track.

You've got to get people across the bridge.

They can't stay in the pit lane.

So it was...

very very intense i'm sure it will come up as part of the post-race debrief about the number of people on the the grid so it was all there but yeah i saw fred very briefly um shook his hands uh he gave me a thumbs up um but unfortunately he left um straight after the race so for the i think the third race in a in a row now travel plans have stopped him speaking to the media

pit lane should we talk about the track falling apart now john track surface breaking up at turn 19 what was the cause of that was that an area that had been resurfaced uh appears to have been um it's something that only really properly came up today nico holkenberg said he'd actually noticed it um on the driver's parade this morning that there was there was some slight looseness of the surface um in this area which clearly then got uh exacerbated over the race

When the race was red flagged, it was a very thin layer of stones and resurfacing on the top that was causing the problem.

So what the FI did during that period was just to take that layer off.

So it was very easy and below it was all fine.

So the issue had obviously gone away.

Quite why it had come up today, I mean, potentially it could have been that today was much hotter than any day we've had so far this weekend.

It's been...

Quite chilly at times.

It has been hot, but not as hot as it was today.

And I also am told that there were some elements of the asphalt in the pit lane also melting at times or getting close to that kind of softness where you can feel the movement in the asphalt.

So whether it was the surfacing chemicals or processes or materials that had been used that caused the problem, but it was quite an unusual thing because normally if a track's going to break up, it's going to normally does it on day one.

or much earlier in the weekend, quite rare to leave it so late into the weekend.