Native organisers are working with the FIA so as to add extra gravel traps to the Purple Bull Ring in Spielberg in time for this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix with a view to minimize down on the excessive variety of monitor restrict violations.
There was a report variety of monitor restrict incidents in final yr’s race, overwhelming race management that means that it took a very long time for warning flags and time penalties to be issued.
Over 1,200 potential monitor limits infringements in complete had been reported throughout final yr’s race with a complete of 83 infringements had been recognized, all of them occurring on the ultimate two corners of the 4.318km monitor.
After the race it emerged that there merely hadn’t been time to assessment video footage and telemetry from each single case, resulting in a protest from the Aston Martin group that the foundations had not been constantly utilized.
It took a number of hours for the stewards and officers to undergo all of the monitor restrict violations that had been flagged up by the software program and to situation a revised race outcome with eight drivers handed post-race penalties.
One driver – Alpine’s Esteban Ocon – discovered himself handed a complete of 4 separate sanctions after the race, including as much as a complete of 30 seconds of penalties that dropped him out of the highest ten and left him categorized in P14.
The delay and confusion to confirming the ultimate classification was extensively criticised and mocked on the time, and organisers are decided to make sure there isn’t any repeat of the chaos once more this weekend.
“We will not have it once more,” McLaren CEO Zak Brown stated within the days instantly after final yr’s race. “We will not have a race and 5 hours later you could have that diploma of change and penalties.
“It undoubtedly wasn’t splendid,” he added. “That is stating the plain.”
Organisers have now accepted the advice made by the race stewards final yr so as to add two 2.5-metre-wide gravel traps on the edges of the exit of turns 9 and 10, with the required work being undertaken within the final two weeks.
Whereas they need to scale back the necessity for post-race penalties, gravel traps aren’t a magic bullet as they’re problematic for different motorsports occasions that run on the Purple Bull Ring.
Gravel traps on the edges of such high-speed corners may cause explicit security considerations for two-wheel racing, that means it is perhaps essential to take away the gravel traps once more earlier than the subsequent go to by MotoGP and others.
The FIA had acknowledged there was a obligatory trade-off concerned within the differing necessities when it issued final yr’s suggestions.
“We word that whereas this isn’t an easy answer in relation to different sequence that race right here, it has proved to be very efficient at different corners and circuits with related points.”
The Purple Bull Ring beforehand accommodated the wants of the motorcycling sequence by including a chicane at flip 2, however this isn’t a bit of the monitor utilized by Components 1 on the Austrian GP.
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