F1 drivers assessed the Saudi Arabia track, with their verdicts supporting one another in favour of the track being tough.
The Jeddah Corniche Circuit will be the host for the first-ever Saudi GP, the penultimate race of this season., The track is a street circuit, and will present drivers and teams with a new challenge to take on.
The track boasts 27 corners, close-quarters walls and some flat-out sections. The stats report that 79% of a lap around it will be at full speed, with the average speed level clocking at 150+ mph.
The F1 drivers assessed the Saudi Arabia track, and came to a common consensus – it would be a challenging race.
As quoted by crash.net, Lewis Hamilton said, “We have all these simulations, but we don’t know what the track grip level is going to be until we get out there, it looks quite dirty.
“It’s not far off Silverstone-kind-of-surface. We’ve got these long, long straights. Everything is a little bit different to the simulator – a lot of the tracks have these perfect scans of the track whereas this one is a guesstimate of what the track is going to be like.
“There’s a lot of unknowns and none of us will know until we truly get onto the track tomorrow.”
“It is probably one of the dustiest tracks at the moment,” McLaren’s Lando Norris chipped in.
“I’m hoping it’ll clear up a bit before tomorrow. It looks to be a challenging circuit, very high-speed, not a lot of room for error. Quite different to most tracks.
“Street circuits are generally slower speed, and then you have high-speed, but normally a lot of runoff. This is kind of in the middle. Very different to tracks we’ve gone to this year. So a new challenge for us all.”
Cojones required
The assessment of the week went to Esteban Ocon, who summed it up better than anyone else.
“It reminds a bit of Macau, some parts of it,” he said.
“It’s going to be pushing the limits with what you can do in the F1 car and how close you can get to the walls at such speeds.
“Very, very high-speed and easy to make a mistake. A proper street circuit, one where you’ll have to have balls!”
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