“I guess they have $90million reasons why”: Red Bull’s Max Verstappen questions why a track as unsafe as the Jeddah street circuit in Saudi was allowed to be part of the F1 calendar

Max Verstappen expressed his concerns over the track in Jeddah before qualifying. Wondered why such tracks are even chosen for the F1 calendar.

Qualifying at the Jeddah circuit was an eventful session. Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton managed to hold onto pole position after title rival Max Verstappen binned it in the final corner of a screamer of a lap.

Before the qualifying session started, Verstappen was critical of the Jeddah street circuit and called it dangerous. The track in Jeddah indeed is a dangerous one.

With the majority of the corners being blind turns, drivers have to rely on information from the team and marshals to ensure they don’t end up in the walls.

After the FP3 session, Max Verstappen spoke candidly about the dangerous nature of the track and even raised questions as to why the track was greenlit in the first place.

“It’s quite a dangerous track,” said the Dutch driver. “There are so many blind corners so if someone is slow around one you wouldn’t know it until you got there.”

 

A fine example of what Verstappen was talking about can be seen in the incident between Lewis Hamilton and Haas driver Nikita Mazepin. 

The seven-time world champion was going slowly and in the middle of the track when he was given the warning that Mazepin was approaching him on a flying lap. The message came too late, and Hamilton could not get out of the way. 

However, Mazepin’s reactions saved the two from a massive collision as the Russian driver aborted the lap by going onto the run-off area right alongside Hamilton’s W12. The British driver was later given a reprimand for the incident by the stewards as well as a 25,000 Euro fine for the team.

Also read: Watch Lewis Hamilton narrowly miss collisions with Pierre Gasly and Nikita Mazepin at the Saudi Arabian GP

Cash Is King

As many drivers in the past have pointed out, Formula 1 is a business that looks to make money in any way possible at the end of the day. Sebastian Vettel even spoke about the incentive F1 has to race in Saudi Arabia, insinuating that money was the deciding factor. 

However, Vettel was referring to the selection of Saudi as a part of the calendar with context to the Arab nation’s shoddy human rights record.

Max Verstappen joined the club when he questioned the decision to allow the Jeddah street circuit, the fastest circuit on the grid after Monza, to be a part of the F1 calendar. The Dutchman was unhappy with how unsafe the track may turn out to be.

“I wonder who signs off these kinds of tracks,” pondered Verstappen. “I guess they have $90million reasons why.”

The Red Bull driver’s fears came true as he ended up slamming the right side of his car into the wall in the final turn just as he was about to finish what would have indeed been the pole-winning lap.

The championship leader qualified in P3 as a result of the crash. Whether or not he will have to incur a five-place penalty because of a gearbox change is yet to be seen.