The Circuit of the Americas is working to alleviate new concerns over a bumpy track ahead of this weekend’s United States Grand Prix.
At the recent MotoGP event in Austin, some riders were calling for the race to be called off after practice due to what they considered to be an unsafe surface to ride on.
This was despite sections of the COTA layout being resurfaced after similar criticisms both from Formula 1 and MotoGP in 2019, with Sebastian Vettel actually suffering a suspension failure due to a particularly severe bump.
“I was on the phone to my FIM colleagues all weekend whilst they were in Austin to get a true understanding of the entire situation,” said FIA race director Michael Masi.
“What we have actually done is, since the 2019 F1 event a large part of the circuit was resurfaced to counter some of the issues that we saw in 2019.
“The areas that were raised by the bikes are different to those that were resurfaced.”
Like two years ago, COTA hopes to avoid any big issues by smoothing out the worst affected areas.
“Tony Cotman, who is one of the FIA circuit inspectors who was previously Champ Car/IndyCar race director, who is in the US, has been out to Austin already during the week,” Masi continued.
“He’s done a report and the circuit are doing some changes for us to address some of the concerns.
“They’ll grind some bumps and so forth, but we’ve got some time to do it so they’ll do what they can in the time frame.”
This weekend is of course the first F1 race in the US since 2019 after last year’s was cancelled due to Covid-19.
And after the smoothness of Sochi and Istanbul Park, Austin is set to provide a very different challenge for the teams.
