Formula 1 drivers have been highly critical of the new Miami circuit, and their bluntness has angered Clive Bowen, CEO of Apex Circuit Design, which built the track in Florida.
In particular, during the second practice on Friday, Carlos Sainz crashed his Ferrari heavily in the chicane, where ordinary concrete barriers have been installed, not protected by special Tecpro shock-resistant blocks. And during Saturday’s practice in the same spot, Alpine racer Esteban Ocon had an accident and the overload at the time of the collision reached a level of 51 g, after which a crack formed in the chassis and it had to be replaced.
This prevented the French driver from taking part in qualifying, but the team assembled a car for him based on a new chassis, and Esteban headed to the start of the Grand Prix on Sunday.
“If the car goes off track due to understeer and slides towards the guardrail, there should be no problem,” Bowen said in an interview with Motor Sport magazine. “But here’s what happened: the driver lost control of the rear of the car, he turned and kept backing up until he hit a barrier.
Where should the fence protected by Tecpro blocks end? Next year the concrete wall will be in the same place, but Tecpro can still reach it.”
According to Bowen, it was not possible to do this over the weekend as race director Nils Wittich refused to make any changes, arguing that the track had been officially homologated by the FIA.
Above all, Bowen was hurt by the critical comments from the riders about the quality of the tarmac: “Actually I took them personally, you could say my professional pride was hurt. We spent a lot of time getting it right, doing extensive research.
We must not forget that when the race is first held on a certain track, these things happen. The same happened at the COTA circuit in Austin and in Singapore. When the asphalt was replaced on the highway in Istanbul Park, the same thing happened there.
If you think from this point of view, then it’s only a matter of time: you have to wait for the coverage of the route to decrease. If the asphalt is completely new, it must be given time.
On Friday and Saturday the track was very muddy and we were afraid it wouldn’t go the way we wanted. But it’s interesting that we already saw several sections on Sunday, we saw overtaking in corners – in the middle of the pack I saw quite a few such overtakings.
I didn’t expect to overtake in fast corners because of course the cars don’t have traction there, and yet the drivers overtook even there. This means that the race track was no longer the only thing, because if there was no grip outside, such an overtaking would not be possible.
In the official Formula 1 statistics, the Miami Grand Prix circuit was at least 2nd in the number of overtakings, only losing to Bahrain.
Source: F1 News
I’m Todderic Kirkman, a journalist and author for athletistic. I specialize in covering all news related to sports, ranging from basketball to football and everything in between. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, I have become an invaluable asset to my team. My ambition is to bring the most up-to-date information on sports topics around the world.
