By Alan Baldwin
AUSTIN, Texas, Oct 23 (Reuters) – Max Verstappen fears the bumpy ride at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas is out of control and could do long-term damage to his spine.
Red Bull’s four-time world champion joked to reporters after he won the Singapore Grand Prix, the race before Austin, that he would “probably need to order a new spine” for the race at the Circuit of the Americas and “become like Robocop”.
The Dutch driver returned to the theme on arrival in Texas by emphasising it was a serious concern.
“I was joking about that, of course, in the last race. But it’s not really a joke to be honest, because we mentioned this already for years that it’s actually getting a bit out of control,” he said.
The 29-year-old said that last year, in a race he won, he had pulled 5-6 G-force in some corners and put more than 9G on his spine in vertical load.
“Especially the older you get, you think about that more and more,” he said.
“That’s not what you want. And with these cars, especially under braking, you bottom out way harder… and I know around here, in some places, it’s very bumpy under braking.”
“From the checks that I’ve done from my spine, the bottom end doesn’t look that great… I know that can be part of sport but it’s also further damage from the cars that we had the last few years. And now if we continue with driving or finding this acceptable to drive on then you are going to suffer with that much more.”
Verstappen said he loved the layout, which he described as one of the best, and being in the nearby city but the bumps were unacceptable and needed fixing but that would require costly excavating works.
His comments drew some support from other drivers, including McLaren’s reigning champion Lando Norris who said he had also suffered.
“It’s pretty bad. There’s a lot of places I need to take headache tablets before I go out, simply because it’s so bumpy and you’re hitting your head pretty hard against the headrests and things because of the bumps. So it’s certainly not a nice thing. But there’s not much we can do,” said the Briton.
Mercedes’ George Russell said rule changes had made the problem worse.
“We’re not an IndyCar or an F2 car that run their ride heights reasonably high; our ride heights are 10 mil (millimetres) at the end of the straight, a centimetre from the ground. So, any tiny bump, you really feel it and the side profile of the tyres now, since we’ve been with the 18-inch, is substantially smaller.
“The circumference of the tyre is the same, the circumference of the rim is far greater. So, you’ve lost all of that effective suspension in the tyre, which was a damper that we kind of don’t have anymore.”
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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