While Hamilton escaped any major dramas on a day when a number of other drivers hit trouble around the new F1 venue, he was left far from impressed about the sequence of corners before the long final straight.
The elevated Turn 14/15 chicane, which passes under a turnpike, has been designed to generate mistakes that leave drivers exposed to a potential challenge from behind on the following run down to the last corner.
However, the ultra compact nature of the complex, with drivers needing to attack the kerbs at slow speed, did not impress the seven-time champion.
“The track’s quite nice to drive except for the chicane,” said Hamilton. “It’s so tight.
“It reminds me of being in a B&Q car park when I was six years old/seven years old, in a go kart, going in between cars.
“It’s a corner where maybe in future they can remove that one and it will improve the track.”
Hamilton also said that he was not too happy with how bumpy the track was on the first day of running.
“It’s kind of crazy when you think that people in this day and age should be able to make a flat road relatively easy,” he said.
“There were frigging big, big, big bumps and so many places where the track like joins up with somewhere else. So I don’t know if they will be able to grind that at night and improve it.”
Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri AT03, Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT03
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
But not all drivers were so downbeat about the circuit, with Kevin Magnussen saying he actually like the challenge of the chicane.
“That’s kind of cool,” he said. “It’s not thrilling in the same way as the high-speed corners, but it’s very blind and it’s like over a crest with big kerbs, and big change of direction at low speed.
“It’s quite unique I’d say, so in that way cool. But it’s obviously very slow.”
One of the key problems on the opening day of action, which triggered a number of incidents, was the dirty track surface. It meant that if drivers…
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