George Russell: All circuits have dangerous sections

George Russell said that the incident in Melbourne did not in any way affect his relationship with Fernando Alonso, whom, having already returned to Monaco, he met by chance in a cafe.

George Russell: “I have already said that the incident has not affected my personal relationship with Fernando. By the way, at home we met by chance in a cafe, so for both of us everything is already a thing of the past.

When the helmets are on, we are all competitors, but off the track we obviously treat each other with respect. Although in moments of misfortune we are of course overwhelmed with emotions. But when we met in a cafe, we didn’t talk about it. And he didn’t try to take my coffee, although something like that probably could have happened! (laughs)

But when the incident happened, I found myself in an extremely uncomfortable position, as my car was almost upside down in a blind bend on the stretch, where speeds of up to 250 km/h can be reached. And at that point, very serious problems could have arisen.

Luckily the nearest car was 10 seconds behind me and I think it only took 10 or 12 seconds for the safety car to come out. In theory, however, five, six or seven cars could have passed around the circuit in those ten seconds if the accident had occurred on the first lap of the race, and even if yellow flags had been raised on the track, multiple collisions could have occurred . occurred.

I want to say that more than once we have seen dangerous incidents where the car flew back onto the track after an accident, as happened in 2022 with Carlos Sainz in Japan. I think we need to find an automatic way so that the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) mode is activated immediately, for at least half a second, as soon as someone’s car is in the danger zone.

In such situations, when the lives of the riders are in danger, seconds matter. I think it’s time to take the help of modern technology and try to do something in this regard.

Turn 6 at Albert Park itself is very interesting, probably one of the best on this track, so I wouldn’t want to see the configuration changed, but it’s worth considering. If you hit a wall there, the car just flies away and back onto the track.

However, we should not talk only about Albert Park – I think that on all tracks there are dangerous sections where the barriers are located in a certain way, and cars from them can bounce back onto the stretch, and this is, of course, bad. At the same time, we don’t want the safety zones to be too wide, we don’t want them to be covered with asphalt. You see, in general everything is fine, but the position of the stops raises questions. Even if they are close to the track, but oriented along it, at least the car doesn’t bounce back on the line.”