Torrential rain battered the historic Monza circuit to virtually wash out first practice for Sunday's Italian Grand Prix.
As thunder and lightning boomed and crackled overhead, the drivers and pit crews, as well as fans and photographers, were forced to take shelter.
The rain was so heavy towards the end of the 90-minute session, the water began to bubble up through the drains directly in front of the teams' garages.
That led to several mechanics taking on a different role as they grabbed brooms to sweep away the deluge that threatened to flood the garage floors.
With five minutes remaining, and with the rain showing no sign of relenting, race control eventually red-flagged the session.
Not that a driver would have ventured out in such conditions in any case given the obvious dangers.
Come the conclusion, there was the unusual sight of a Force India at the top of the timesheets, with Adrian Sutil's lap of one minute 32.842 seconds.
Even that was 10 seconds down on the fastest race lap of last year when Fernando Alonso led a dominant McLaren one-two given the track was damp early on following a light shower.
But 35 minutes in the rain started to fall, and although a number of drivers opted for wet-weather running as tomorrow's qualifying session is expected to be hit, the conditions steadily grew worse.
Honda's Rubens Barrichello and Giancarlo Fisichella in his Force India were both within a second of Sutil, but the remainder were some way off the pace as their times were set in the wet.
Timo Glock was almost four seconds down in fourth place, with the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa ninth and 14th, 4.5secs and 7.3secs adrift.
Lewis Hamilton was one of six drivers who did not post a time, the McLaren star and current championship leader doing nothing more than an installation lap when it was relatively dry.
McLaren team-mate Heikki Kovalainen joined Hamilton in looking on from the garage, along with BMW Sauber duo Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld, Red Bull's Mark Webber and Kazuki Nakajima for Williams.
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