02/09/2020
NEWS STORY
In the latest of a number of intriguing moves as F1 bosses seek to put some semblance of a 2020 'world' championship together, it has been announced that the second leg of the double-header in Bahrain will be run on the circuit's outer 'oval' layout as opposed to the traditional F1 track.
With qualifying lap times under 55 seconds - news that will strike fear into the hearts of anyone following the event on the live timing app - race laps times under 60 seconds and a race distance of 87 laps, team bosses admit that the event will be "chaotic but entertaining".
"With 55 seconds per lap it will be a big mess on traffic on the qualifying laps," admitted Frederic Vasseur, "it will be nightmare, but I think it's exciting to have different layouts of the tracks when we have a double event like this.
"It makes sense to do something a bit different," he added, "and the advantage with Bahrain is that you have at least three configurations for the layout of the track. It makes sense, it will be a bit different to the first one."
"From what I hear, this new layout is going to be incredibly fast," said Claire Williams, "which is going to make it interesting.
"We haven't started doing any simulation work but I'm sure everybody is going to be jumping on that as quickly as possible."
"We haven't yet started the simulation work," said AlphaTauri's Franz Tost, "but it will become... especially in qualifying, from the traffic, maybe a little bit chaotic but entertaining.
"And in the race then we will see how it is with overtaking," he continued, "because all the cars are very close together and then we will see how good the top cars and are how many times they will overlap everyone."
"I think that will be good," enthused Guenther Steiner, "also for the spectators on TV, to see how it works.
"The more important thing is how Liberty dealt with this," he added, "to find locations and to dig deep to find the places to go, which are new, which makes it interesting for the rest of the season.
"For this season, it's fantastic. For sure, there's a lot of work involved in (a) very short period of time and financially it all needs to work as well," he admitted.
"Going to race tracks you haven't been to for a long time, it's actually very nice," he added. "It's something new, something to think about, something different - so for the spectators and for us I think it's just a very good achievement from them."
"We're always so welcome in Bahrain," added Christian Horner, "and they've got a great facility there, so the fact that we're using an oval is really interesting. It's a bit different for Formula 1.
"Honda has a great deal more experience of oval racing having just won the Indianapolis 500," he continued. "We'll be looking to benefit and draw on all of their experience and knowledge.
"I don't think it's going to be an Indianapolis-type circuit but I think the challenge of an oval type lay-out, that part of the circuit is going to be different. It's going to be a short lap and should be exciting. We're looking forward to it."
"It's good to have a different type of track at the same place," said Honda's Toyoharu Tanabe. "Christian gave me a big pressure to improve our performance in the new layout - so it's a challenge.
"We work on the simulation and improve our PU management to achieve the maximum performance at the circuit."