Saudi Arabia hosted its first Formula 1 race last December in Jeddah, and the layout of the circuit drew both praise and criticism from drivers and fans.
Several members of the grid complained about visibility problems on the line, even the president of the GPDA (Drivers Association), George Russell, told Motorsport.com that the track was “very lacking from a safety point of view and racing.”
Ahead of his second grand prix, to be held at the end of March, circuit officials confirmed in January that they would make adjustments after hearing feedback from the drivers.
The only real change has taken place on 27, where the exit has been widened by a meter and a half. It was there that Max Verstappen hit the wall on the spectacular qualifying lap he was riding in Q3, denying him the chance to start from pole position in Sunday’s race.
In several more laps steel plates have been installed that should allow the single-seaters to brush against the walls without risk of damaging the car. Martin Whitaker , managing director of the Saudi Motorsport Company, believes that all these changes will make the track even faster, thus exceeding the 252 km/h average seen in qualifying.
“The layout of the circuit remains the same, only turn 27 changes,” Whitaker explained. “We’ve only moved some of the barriers back a little bit at certain points to improve visibility through the corners.”
“I could do the lap a bit faster, that is if it’s not fast enough already. Most of the changes have been made for this year, and I think we’ve done the seven to ten they were looking for, the rest will take a bit longer.” , he continued.
“For example, the vision on the inside of turn 23 and 24 is somewhat pending, and we simply have not had time to do it,” said the director. “That’s an area where I think the FIA race director can help to tell the driver to be careful when he drives by, or not to slow down when he’s done qualifying.
Whitaker said there were “12 or 15 spots around the track” that the FIA and F1 had asked the promoter to look at, focusing on the visibility issue ahead of the 2022 round.
“The speed of the circuit is such that the drivers got to the slow cars very quickly. I think this was not a big deal on Sunday, but in qualifying, where you have single-seaters that have to return to the box after their lap,” he said.
“The FIA can do things about it, because in the drivers’ briefing they can tell people that they can’t slow down in certain corners, but it seemed better to us, as organizers, to see what we could do,” concluded the Saudi Motorsport Company director. .
