Gasly urges drivers to display “common sense” on Jeddah out-laps

Pierre Gasly urged drivers to display some “common sense” on the Jeddah out-laps at the Saudi GP.

F1 will race at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit for the first time ever. Information about the track is slowly being revealed, and one crucial tidbit is the fact that it is a flat-out track.

The traditional practice in the sport is to slow down on a cooldown lap. But on high-speed tracks like the one in Jeddah, such a move can result in very slow out-laps.

Moreover, with Jeddah being a street circuit, driver visibility will be at a premium. As a result, crashes and red flags could be the theme of the weekend.

Gasly urged drivers to display some “common sense” on the Jeddah out-laps, and asked them to be careful at all times.

“The high speed you can’t really slow down, so we’ll have to use common sense between drivers, because it can be very dangerous,” he told Motorsport.com.

“I’ve had the experience with Brendon (Hartley) in Baku, a very high-speed section, coming into like a very slow car in a blind corner is not something we should do.

A view of the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. Saudi Arabia, December 2021.
High speed here could be catastrophic. Source: planetf1.com

“So I think it’s just using common sense between us drivers. I think with the last long straight, you can create your gap at the end. This is okay. And the last straight is wide enough. But clearly before that, we’ll have to be quite careful.”

Hope for the best

Carlos Sainz, however, dismissed the ultra-safe approach and suggested that there was no need to slow down in every corner.  

“Hopefully there’s not too much (of a problem),” the Ferrari driver said.

“There’s no need to go too slow in all those high-speed corners, because the speed differential can be huge here in a cool-down lap. So yeah, let’s see, could be quite an interesting one.

“We need to rely on FIA safety measures and hope that they’ve done their homework correctly, because the track itself looks challenging, looks different. It looks a bit like a completely different circuit than we’ve been to recently,” he concluded.

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