Australia listens to feedback, makes changes to Albert Park circuit

With the postponement of the Australian Grand Prix, which was originally scheduled for March but has now been moved to November, the track operators see this as an opportunity to listen to feedback from the paddock and the Formula 1 world by making some changes to the track. 

One major change concerns the asphalt mixture, which will be coarser and therefore cause more tyre wear. Andrew Westacott, chief executive at the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, explained this in conversation with Autoaction.com: “We’re starting to have a good look at the asphalt mix as well because Melbourne is not necessarily high-degradation from a tyre wear point of view.”

Westacott continued: “The feedback we’ve had from F1 is that we’re sort of mid-way. We’re not the most aggressive, we’re not the least aggressive – we just don’t do much to tyres. By having a slightly higher abrasiveness of the asphalt mix, we’ll be able to get more strategies because you’re going to get higher tyre deg and coupled with the other changes, you get something that’s a little more interesting to the cars.”

Also focusing on the corners

A number of corners will also be widened or otherwise modified to create multiple racing lines and make overtaking somewhat easier. Westacott says the following about this: “The criticism has been that some of the turns at the moment are not wide enough or there are no alternate lines into apexes. The work that’s being looked at shows that you can widen appropriately Turns 1 and 6, you can modify 9 and 10, you can really achieve some good things at Turn 13 by providing alternate entry lines into those turns.

"We’re only talking one, two or three metres of adjustment. But the other thing that we could also do is adjust camber. At the moment, 13 for instance, I’m told, has negative camber on the outside line. Now, if we had that as all being positive camber and you widen it, suddenly you’re getting an opportunity to provide a number of different lines to the apex.”