During the second round of this world championship, held at the end of March in Saudi Arabiathe world of Formula 1 had experienced moments of great fear for a attack occurred near the circuit of Jeddah, where the first free practice session was taking place. In those same minutes, a missile attack against an Aramco refinery, perpetrated by a rebel armed group from Yemen.
Despite no deaths or injuries in the paddock, the episode raised doubts and perplexities about the need to be able to safely continue the race weekend, which ended regularly without other similar episodes. Months after the incident, the Saudi Prince Abdulaziz Bin Turki Al-Faisal is back to talk about safety conditions that had been created around the racetrack, and which will be further strengthened at the next race, scheduled from 17 to 19 March 2023: “Our number one priority has been everyone’s safety – he has declared – and this not only around the track, but also in the Kingdom. We know we have some concerns about some issues. We are not perfect and we never pretended to be, but at least we are learning from our experiences and we are taking steps to improve things in the future. If you look at the world today, there is chaos everywhere and we have to fight it. There is no safe place to go, be it mass shootings, wars or whatever. We are working with F1 to make sure any concerns that the drivers, teams or individuals, even fans, have, be addressed. Over 4,000 troops were deployed during the event to ensure security, because when things like this happen, there are fears that people who want to exacerbate the situation will seize them. We therefore made sure that no one compromised the safety of the event and the city. For us, safety is even more important than F1. This is a nation, so it’s our number one priority. And we are working with them ”.
In addition, the Prince has already announced the construction of works on the Jeddah track to increase the safety conditions for the drivers on the track, even more so after the bad accident involving Mick Schumacher in qualifying against barriers: “We are working with the FIA and F1 to make some changes to the track – has explained – the layout will be the same, but for security reasons we will improve visibility. We also learned that new cars are more sensitive to curbs, it was the same in Miami. So we changed the vibrators from the first year. We have been working constantly with the FIA and F1 after the second race to make sure we are well prepared when it comes to racing the next one. “
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