George Russell has explained the difficulty in driving a Formula 1 car in treacherous conditions, the kind of which are set to once again dominate this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix.
The safety of the iconic Spa-Francorchamps circuit has been called into question of late following the recent death of Dilano van ‘t Hoff at Eau Rouge in a Formula Regional European Championship race.
Russell called on the FIA to learn from these past incidents and take “bold” decisions to ensure the safety of the drivers, with heavy rain forecast to sweep through the area on Friday and Saturday, likely impacting qualifying, the Sprint Shootout and the Sprint itself.
“At the moment it’s constant communication with the FIA following the tragic passing of Danilo in FRECA,” Russell said.
“The two questions are: Is Spa safe enough? Then, it’s a question of the conditions. Motorsport will always be dangerous when you’re travelling at this speed.
“If you were to put a ranking of risk of all of the circuits, for sure Spa is one of the riskier circuits along with Jeddah, Monaco and Suzuka to a degree. Then the combination of the weather, it’s very challenging.
“The visibility, we just have no visibility whatsoever. The way I describe it is driving down a motorway in pouring rain and turning your windscreen wipers off. So not really any short-term solutions.
“I personally think Spa is safe enough, we just need to find a solution for the visibility.
“Fortunately the weather looks better on Sunday, so that will be going ahead. But following recent events, I think the FIA have to be bold with their decisions when it comes to safety and visibility.
“We all want to race but when you’re going down that straight at over 200mph and you can’t see 50 metres in front of you, there will be huge incidents. So they have a big responsibility this weekend.”
Following Van ‘t Hoff’s accident, there have been calls for changes to be made to Eau Rouge to make it safer, including from both Lance Stroll and Charles Leclerc.
However, world champion Max Verstappen believes it is not track related.
“Honestly, I don’t think it’s really track related,” Verstappen said. “You have dangerous corners, yes, and in the wet there’s always more risk, but I think everyone is competent enough to make the right calls.
“If you can drive, you can drive, and if it’s too wet, it’s too wet.
“Accidents happen unfortunately, and when you look back at the one that happened, it was just extremely unfortunate the way it happened.”
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