Lewis Hamilton says the “s**t” new track surface has ruined the challenge of Istanbul Park after practice for the Turkish Grand Prix.
The return to one of Hermann Tilke’s best designs after nine years was meant to be about the thrill of seeing modern Formula 1 machinery take the legendary Turn 8 flat-out.
Instead, drivers were tiptoeing around as if it was wet, with Max Verstappen’s fastest lap time of the day three seconds slower than Sebastian Vettel’s pole time in 2011.
“It was a bit of a disaster today, to be honest,” Hamilton, who was fourth-fastest in FP2, commented afterwards.
“This track is such a fantastic circuit and I really don’t fully understand when they spend millions to resurface a track.
“I know it’s been sitting around for some time but they could have just cleaned it maybe, instead of wasting all the money.
“Now the track is worse than Portimao was when we had the brand-new surface there. So for us at least, the tyres aren’t working.
“You can see it, it’s like an ice rink out there and so you don’t get the enjoying of the lap as you normally would at Istanbul and I don’t see that changing.”
Conditions did improve somewhat in the afternoon as the drivers began to lay some rubber and gain confidence, but Hamilton explained the challenge drivers are facing.
“It’s terrifying the whole way around,” he said.
“It’s almost like there’s wet patches all over because you are on slicks, accelerating and it [the car] just goes so fast. It’s because you are way, way below the temperature window.
“These tyres, they are so hard and only work in a certain window, so if you are 10 or 20 degrees below they are not working.
“For some reason, this surface is so smooth, a lot of the older circuits, are a lot more open between the stones, so it works the tyre more.
“This one is super closed, flat and shiny and I guess oil seeps from the tarmac. It’s s*** with a capital S.”
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Given the expected increase in cornering speeds versus 2011 and the extreme loads at Turn 8, tyre supplier Pirelli brought the hardest three compounds to Istanbul.
However, motorsport boss Mario Isola now admits that was a mistake.
“Maybe yes, but we have data that is very, very old from years ago. We had a completely different situation, different tyres, different compounds and different cars,” he said.
“So we are looking at this I think as a new track. We made our simulation considering this circuit as a new track and yes, obviously, we had a look at the data from 2011 but I believe that is not very relevant.
“We know that Turn 8 is quite severe on the tyre,” added Isola.
“The rest of the circuit is not so heavy, not so severe on the tyres, but knowing the characteristics of the tarmac in advance, yes, maybe it was good to go one step softer.”