Chaos at the Singapore GP as Lizard on Track interrupts final practice

A monitor lizard interrupted the final practice session for the Singapore Grand Prix on Saturday evening after running across the track during a live session.

Shortly after the creature was spotted by television cameras at Turn 17, race officials stopped the race with a red flag to give marshals the opportunity to chase the lizard off the track.

Line operations resumed shortly thereafter without further interruption.

Fernando Alonso encountered the lizard on the exit of Turn 17, shortly after his engineer told him to look for it in the final sector.

“It’s in the middle of the track,” the Aston Martin driver said over team radio before returning to the pits.

Monitor lizards are a common sight on the island of Singapore and their appearance at the final training session on Saturday followed a similar incident at training on Friday last year.

The Singapore National Parks Authority website states that monitor lizards are generally shy unless cornered or chased, and it is recommended that they be observed from a distance.

Three species are native to Singapore. The largest, the Malayan monitor, grows up to three metres long. Although they secrete poison to kill their prey, this is not fatal to humans.

They are diurnal, meaning they sleep at night, and all three times they were spotted on track during a race weekend in Singapore, it was during sessions just before sunset.

After a particularly large lizard appeared during the final practice session in 2016, the track intruder was nicknamed “Godzilla” by Max Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase over the Red Bull team radio.