F1 braced for 'most severe' test with high-stress La Monumental Madring corner

Pirelli's chief F1 tyre engineer believes the championship will face the "most severe turn" with the "critical" banking at the new La Monumental corner at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Turn 12 at the new Madring is a long banked right-hander corner, which whilst not as steep in gradient as the final corner at Zandvoort, is considerably longer and will be taken at higher speed. 

La Monumental has around 13.5 degrees of bank, far lower than Zandvoort, or indeed AVUS in Germany, which had a remarkable 43 degrees of bank. 

This will place more stress on the tyres owing to the lateral loads, with Pirelli bringing the C2-C3-C4 tyres to the new race in the Spanish capital. 

Whilst it does have some real-life track data from Ferrari's demo outing earlier in the year and the FIA F3 test, which featured 19 red flags over two days, Simone Berra believes the F1 drivers will be limited by pure grip available and not limited by power around the "critical and severe" banking.

"We gathered a lot of information, we went there also to measure the track because obviously it's very important to characterise as well the tarmac, which is an important factor for the tyres," Berra told media, including RacingNews365. 

"The tarmac is pretty smooth as usual for a new tarmac. I would say also the level of bitumen is quite high, as they have performed high-pressure water jet cleaning, and this is obviously helped a lot in removing this bitumen layer and increasing the grip level for the test that we had with F3, we expect the track to be in slightly worse condition because in the next weeks. 

"Some dust will come down, and the grip level will reduce a little bit. But we expect to start the week in a very good condition in this sense. In terms of the circuit itself, obviously the turn with the banking is the most critical and most severe; it is probably the most severe turn in the championship. 

"We need to gather the real data, let's say, but on paper and from simulations, it seems so because it's a very long turn, limited by grip, not by the power, so they will be on the limit. 

"Zandvoort is not grip limited now; it's power limited, and also in terms of duration, it is less in terms of seconds.

"I guess that if we see the pure energy that the turn gives to the tyres, it's higher. We are speaking about 20-20 per cent higher energy compared to the reference of Zandvoort.

"They can also try to they can try different approaches to that turn, different race lines, so it's very demanding that turn. For the rest, the walls are pretty close. We had a lot of red flags during the test, and with a lot of interruptions, that could be another factor. 

"It's considered a normal street circuit like Singapore, so I would not be surprised to have significant incidents, let's say, or interruptions during both practice and the race."