Max Verstappen slates Saudi Arabia track as "very, very dangerous" after Mick Schumacher smash

Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

Verstappen slates Saudi Arabia track as "very, very dangerous" after Schumacher smash

Haas driver is out of Sunday's race

Ian Parkes & Topher Smith

Saturday 26 March 2022 22:30

Max Verstappen has slated the track design of the Jeddah Corniche Circuit following the horrific crash that has ruled Mick Schumacher out of Sunday's Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

The circuit was revised ahead of this weekend's event following criticisms aired last year over its dangerous nature due to the number of incidents on the second-fastest circuit on the F1 calendar.

But in qualifying, Haas driver Schumacher suffered a violent crash, leading to many taking to social media to express their displeasure at the design of the track.

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Red Bull driver Verstappen, who will line up fourth for tomorrow's race, later criticised the circuit's lack of safety due to its blind corners.

"Last year for me, personally, I was happy with how we went through the weekend in terms of crashes," said the Red Bull driver.

"In some places, if you lose the car like today with Mick and you go flat out into the wall it is extremely painful and very, very dangerous.

"Not only that, the straights are not entirely straight because they're all a bit blind. I don't understand why you need to design the track [like this].

"If it's going to be flat out just design it straight. It's just safer for everyone."

Verstappen was "on a different tyre" during qualifying

In qualifying, Verstappen was left puzzled by his lack of grip following the stoppage for Schumacher's incident, labelling it "weird" how he could not get the tyres working.

"It felt like I was driving on a different tyre," added the F1 champion. "Every corner I was losing one or two tenths while doing the same preparation, so I don't understand what went wrong there.

"After such a long break because of the red flag everything cools down, ambient track so there is a big track progression,n but for me, it felt like I was actually getting slower.

"That's something which was very weird and I still had my delta from Q1 and I never improved on that going into Q3. Some corners I was still losing time to that, so that was pretty weird.

"We'll look into it. It's not the end of the world as we see the potential in the car with Checo [Perez] in first. I'm happy for him, he deserves it.

"For tomorrow we look good and have good top speed as well. I hope we can use that."