On Friday, F1 drivers will get to try out the renewed starting grid.
Fernando Alonso slipped his Aston Martin over the white lines in Jeddah. PDO
F1 cars changed radically at the beginning of this year.
The most visible change concerned their tires, which grew from 13 inches to as many as 18 inches.
However, the price of visibility was high. F1 drivers these days can’t see the outline of the car behind the huge wheels. In practice, because of that as well Esteban Ocon (Bahrain GP) that Fernando Alonso (Saudi Arabian GP) have received penalties because their car has been incorrectly positioned on the starting grid.
– Visibility from the car is really bad. That’s the biggest problem, leading the World Series Max Verstappen admitted.
Now the series has decided to make the work of the drivers easier. The drivers have complained that they cannot see the outline of the starting grid or the yellow line indicating the position of the front tires.
The story continues after the video
Watch the video where Fernando Alonso stopped his car in the wrong place. F1 starts can be watched on VSport’s channels and Elisa Viihde’s Viaplay service.
A couple of changes will be tried out at the Albert Park park circuit in Melbourne this weekend. First of all, the starting grids have been made 20 centimeters wider than before. In addition, guiding lines are now painted on the first rows of the grid, so that the drivers can find the right route to the center of the starting point.
Width helps
After the practice runs on Friday, the drivers focus on training for the starts. Based on them, the F1 bosses conclude whether the new paintwork will make the drivers’ starting processes easier.
– I don’t know how much it helps, because we approach the starting square looking to the side. We don’t look ahead, which is the biggest difficulty, Alonso clarified the meaning of the yellow line.
– That 20 cents helps. Of course, on some tracks, for example in Monaco and Imola, the start already happens a bit at an angle, because we don’t want to crash. We have to think about how the punishment practice is treated in those places, Alonso said for The Race magazine.
The situation is problematic, because the difficulty of finding the starting square only produces more pointless penalties.
– I don’t think that the FIA wants to see penalties either, because there is no race benefit to be gained from it, Alonso reminded.