Retro F1 – Fear over Jeddah

“Silverstone between walls”. This is how the champion of Formula 2 Oscar piastri summed up the brand new route of Jeddah, on which the Formula 1 played the penultimate round of his season, on December 5. A narrow track, fast turns approached blindly, hidden behind walls ready to catch you at the slightest mistake. Pilots, accustomed to leaving the brain in the glove box, loved it. How could it be otherwise, as the adrenaline rush offered by this tour at an average speed of over 252 km/h, flush with the walls, is an exhilarating feeling for these ace drivers. The spectacle lived up to their amazement. Max Verstappen almost scored one of the most spectacular laps of recent years in qualifying, before the track finally refused to be tamed.

Therefore, when such a track is dubbed, how can we make sense of the legitimate complaints concerning the dangerousness of the Raidillon de l'Eau Rouge at Spa-Francorchamps, when this Saudi circuit, whose first stone was laid only eight months previously, benefited of FIA homologation… 24 hours before the first F1 run? This circuit is madness. A playground worthy of Fast & Furious which makes pilots and (TV) spectators dream. But in such conditions, a pileup can quickly happen. We saw it with the Pérez-Leclerc contact at the second corner, during the second restart after the red flag. This slight racing incident, which occurred because there was not enough room on the track, had the consequence of putting several cars into the wall (Russell, mazepin, Pérez), causing a shower of debris… and a new red flag. Fingers crossed it never gets worse than this.