Conditions like at the Turkish GP ‘a robbery’

Daniel Ricciardo said it would be a “robbery” if Formula 1 made low-grip conditions like those at the Turkish GP the norm.

Most of the talk coming into the race weekend was about the spectacle of seeing the fastest Formula 1 cars in history flying through the iconic Turn 8 at Istanbul Park. Could anyone take it flat out? Who would need padding to protect their neck and who would brave it without?

Well, there was certainly no need for padding as the super-slippy new tarmac meant that drivers were crawling through Turn 8 and the rest of the circuit for that matter just to keep their cars on the road.

And once the rain fell for FP3, qualifying and the race it became like driving on ice, or even worse.

For the spectacle it was certainly something different for the fans, but Ricciardo said a repeat of such low-grip conditions would be a “robbery” considering all the money teams spend in the pursuit of ultimate performance.

“I knew everybody sitting on the couch was going to have a fun and exciting one to watch,” he is quoted by Motorsportweek.com.

“I don’t know if we learned anything from this weekend. Because we will probably never come to a situation like it with this level of grip.

“When teams are spending so much money developing cars and putting all the knowledge into designing the fastest race cars in the world, not being able to use them feels like a little bit of, obviously not this weekend it is an anomaly, but if it was [like this] all the time it would feel like a robbery.

“Why are we putting so much into these cars if we cannot actually push the limits?

“We did not really get to push an F1 car this weekend, sure it made it tricky and exciting but it was hard to get a lot of satisfaction out of it from a driving point of view.”

Seb's start was ___________#TurkishGP 🇹🇷 #F1 pic.twitter.com/u02kSPB6zp

— Formula 1 (@F1) November 16, 2020

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Istanbul Park was a late addition to the 2020 calendar, meaning the resurfacing was done late. Organisers deemed it necessary though with Formula 1 being absent from the venue since 2011.

And while Ricciardo was grateful that the venue stepped in to help make a new calendar, he doesn’t know why they thought it was a good idea to resurface the track a month before the event, and urged other circuits not to do the same.

“I sympathise because it is a last-minute calendar, so I do not want to go too hard on them,” he explained.

“But I don’t recommend they resurface the tracks like this a month before we come here deliberately.”

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