Lewis Hamilton issues 'price to pay' verdict over modern F1 trend

Lewis Hamilton believes modern F1 circuits do not threaten drivers with enough of a "price to pay" as changes have been made.

Older grand prix tracks such as Zandvoort, Silverstone, and Suzuka all feature limited run-off areas with grass and gravel meeting drivers if they stray off line, whilst modern designs such as Austin, Qatar and Abu Dhabi largely feature asphalt run-offs with plenty of gaps between the track and the walls, allowing drivers to recover in time if a mistake is made.

Hamilton, a veteran of 376 grands prix, believes that older circuits have "real character," as he also called on F1 to ensure that Sprint races are held on the correct circuits to best showcase the format, name-checking Singapore in particular, which is set to appear for the first time in 2026.

"You can't ever go too far in terms of safety, but the tracks are different today than they were back in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the run-off areas were grass, and when you pushed beyond the limit, there was a price to pay," Hamilton told media, including RacingNews365. 

"That's in the sense of you could end up in the gravel or damage the car, and today you can run wide and come back on, so that is not something I love, but it is the way it is. It is great having old circuits that have real character, and I always describe them as an old house.

"Generally, the new circuits don't have character, but Austin, for example, is a great track to drive on a single lap, but it is a great race circuit as well. There are a lot of tracks we go to, maybe we have a fan base, but the track doesn't give us a lot.

"You're just following each other and qualifying is everything, and there is work to do on the Sprint races, which are a positive, but we can work on it to make the races even more exciting.

"Some of the Sprints are just following, like next year, we've got Singapore, and 19 laps in Singapore, you won't see any overtaking, but there are other tracks where it could bode well, but I think the sport is going in the right direction. 

"It is just amazing to see the sport growing across the globe, and I'm so happy to see the sport being taken in by new people, because when I started in F1, it was the same group and it wasn't growing with the old management, which were not forward-thinking."