In free practice and qualifying for the Miami GP, the drivers discovered that there is no grip if they go off the good line, where there is rubber and they don’t skid.
That suggests that the race will be boring, since when the drivers get out of that line to try to overtake, they will lose performance.
“I think the most important thing is that the tarmac is a joke,” said Sergio Pérez when asked by Motorsport.com if there will be any overtaking in the race.
“The race is going to be difficult. And you will see the drivers making mistakes because they have put us in this situation.”
Adding to Perez’s comments, Fernando Alonso said the Miami tarmac “wasn’t F1 standard” while Lando Norris suggested it “wasn’t good enough”.
Alonso revealed that the issue had been raised at the drivers’ meeting on Friday night, and that the lack of grip had not improved on Saturday.
“It’s still very difficult to get off the line,” he explained. “There’s like rubble off the line, so it’s going to be tough. We said on Friday that the track, the asphalt, it’s not F1 standards.
“We can’t do anything. I think this weekend we have to put on the show, but that has to change for next year. It’s very difficult to race like this.”
Daniel Ricciardo agreed that it was not possible to go off the good line.
“You literally have to stay on that one line,” he said. “Otherwise you’re not really on track anymore.”
“So instead of becoming kind of a big challenge, it makes it a bit, in a way, like one-dimensional, because you just have that single line option where there’s some rubber build up. So I don’t want to lie and say I like the surface.
Ricciardo ‘s view was echoed by his McLaren F1 teammate Norris , who lamented the fact that the race may not be as entertaining as fans had hoped.
He also questioned whether the organizers had tried anything different with the asphalt of a track that is made from local materials.
“On the racing line there is no bad grip, it’s fine,” said the Englishman. “I think it’s really hot, which makes it feel even worse. But off the track it’s really terrible.”
“And we’re here to do good racing, there’s a lot of fans here. And everyone is expecting an amazing race. But [the organizers] have tried something new with the surface, something they haven’t really done before, which leaves us in the position in the that we are”.
“You don’t want all the circuits to be exactly the same, you like the differences, you like them to be unique.”
“But when there’s so much expectation, and you want good racing, and you want us to provide spectacle, entertainment and everything, and then there’s tarmac that they’re testing and they just improvise…let’s see how it goes.”
“It’s not good enough, because then we can’t do what they ask of us, we can’t put on a good show. We can’t run. It’s not our fault, but it’s a shame.”
Lando Norris cited Jeddah as a track with asphalt that provides great grip.
“I think if it was a surface like we have in Saudi Arabia, for example, it has very high grip in general, it survives high temperatures, then we would have an extremely exciting Sunday,” he said.
“Because you can go wide, you can do different lines, you can do alternate lines, you can do everything whereas this Sunday everyone will just follow the line, it’s always much harder to race that way.”
