Lando Norris has called for urgent changes to be made to the Jeddah Corniche Circuit following Mick Schumacher's high-speed crash in Saturday's qualifying. The Haas driver had to be airlifted to hospital after his car crashed hard at Turn 12 of the track. Schumacher was removed from the VF-22 by the medical team, before being loaded into the back of an ambulance and taken to the Medical Centre. He was then flown to a nearby hospital to undergo further checks, but was later released and took to social media to confirm that he is "okay", though he will not participate in Sunday's Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. In light of the incident, Norris believes that alterations should be carried out on the kerb in question.
Norris raises track safety concerns
When asked whether Schumacher's crash had created more concerns for him about safety, Norris told media including RacingNews365.com : "A little bit. "I think, with this era of cars, with how you have to run them and how they're designed, some kerbs throughout the year might need to change, and I think this kerb is one of them. "I think it was very evident from [the] Formula 2 [race], because [in] Formula 2 you have to run the cars very low as well, and I think there were two crashes and Cem [Bolukbasi] was in hospital [afterwards]. "So I think, just with these type of cars, you can't have such an aggressive kerb at such a speed that we're running at, and the thing that makes it worse is how it's angled to come back and then curves around. "You just get it a little bit wrong and it can be a big incident, like we saw."
Norris wants changes to be made pre-race
Norris believes that the issue needs to be addressed with some urgency, and has called for it to be looked at before Sunday's race takes place. "I think it needs to be edited for tomorrow and changed a bit," the McLaren driver said after qualifying. "Because, especially in a race situation, if you're following or you just get a bit of understeer because of the dirty air and so on, through no fault of your own, you can just get caught out. "With the car and how it is and the kerb, it can easily end up in a bad place, so I think they need to change it before tomorrow." In terms of his own performance on Saturday, Norris qualified in P11 for Sunday's race, whilst teammate Daniel Ricciardo was P12 but has since been handed a three-place grid penalty for impeding Esteban Ocon.
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