01/02/2025
NEWS STORY
Modifications have been carried out to Albert Park's infamous Turn 6 ahead of this year's season opener.
George Russell crashed late in last year's race while battling Fernando Alonso, while the previous day Alex Albon crashed at the same corner, destroying his car and causing Williams to withdraw Logan Sargeant as, without a spare, his car was given over to the Anglo-Thai driver who had crashed at Turn 6 a year earlier causing the race to be red-flagged.
Though popular with the drivers, (then) race director, Niels Wittich, singled out the corner as one that required attention as a result of the tendency for cars involved in incidents to bounce back on to the racing line.
"Turn 6 was one of the main track realignment changes we actually made to speed up that corner at the start of the DRS zone along the back straight," Tom Mottram, chief events officer for the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, tells Speedcafe. "What we've done, and where we've landed with the FIA is there's no changes to drivers right at all on Turn 6; it's really all happening on drivers' left."
This year sees the exit kerbing modified, with the artificial turf behind the kerb now removed and the barriers moved and realigned, while the TecPro barriers have also been extended.
"There's about a 90-metre kerb along there," says Mottram. "What it's been in the past is about 50-odd metres of that was a bevel kerb, which is more on the entry to 7. What we've done now is actually just agree with the FIA that we change that whole kerb to a negative kerb the whole way, so you're not having that kind of accelerating off that kerb once you hit the bevel.
"We added in half a metre of concrete verge before the gravel trap, again, just to allow a little bit of leeway there before getting into the gravel trap. We've also moved back the barrier line there, the tyre bundles, the TecPro barriers, by two metres and actually added in more TecPro barriers at the end of that run and smoothened the taper to try and avoid that kind of bounce back into the track incidents that we've seen."
While aware of the need to slightly slow drivers at the corner, officials were keen not to compromise its character.
"We could slow it down a lot by completely changing that apex," says Mottram, "but you lose the characteristics of that turn.
"It's certainly a consideration where you don't want to make a whole bunch of changes for one additional year, but safety is always paramount, that will always take first and foremost and then take each change year by year."