Chinese GP chaos continues as crucial FIA driver meeting is cancelled

An important meeting set to be held with all of the Formula 1 drivers present has been cancelled by the FIA at the Chinese Grand Prix, following a chaotic Friday.

F1's return to China for the first time since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic has seen a huge amount of drama already, with a red flag disrupting a crucial practice session due to a grass fire breaking out at the side of the track.

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A fire in the same part of the track - turn seven - also caused a delay to sprint qualifying, with SQ2 having to take place a few minutes later than scheduled as marshals raced to put it out.

When sprint qualifying did get back underway, drivers were hit with adverse weather conditions, bringing yet more jeopardy into play heading into SQ3.

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Fire and rain wreaks havoc in China

Eventually, an unpredictable session saw Lando Norris end up on pole for Saturday's sprint race, but not before he had a lap time deleted and then reinstated by race officials for a track limit infringement, giving and then taking away again Lewis Hamilton's chance of a first pole position in any race since the 2023 Hungarian GP.

Just minutes after the end of the chaotic session, the FIA announced that they had cancelled a driver's meeting which was scheduled to take place an hour and a half after the end of sprint qualifying.

All drivers and team managers were meant to be present at the meeting, but Niels Wittich, who is the FIA F1 race director for this weekend, made the decision to cancel it, for reasons unknown at this stage.

Friday at the Shanghai International Circuit did nothing to quell the teams' fear that the weekend would feature varying degrees of unpredictability, with no relevant data available due to F1's five-year absence from the country.

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