F1 Chinese GP return prompts major uncertainties after five-year absence

The last race at the Shanghai circuit was held in 2019, before COVID-19 triggered an extended absence from the country.

Since then, the F1 technical regulations have changed substantially, including a switch to 18-inch tyres.

Inevitably the track surface will also have altered over the intervening years, but unusually Pirelli has not been able to send engineers to assess it in advance, which would normally be the case with brand new venues or one that have not been used for a while.

Given that the track was built on swampland there is also a possibility that bumps have emerged which might not be obvious to the naked eye, but which will be discovered by the ground effect F1 cars once they are running.

An extra twist for drivers and teams as they relearn the circuit is that Shanghai is also the first sprint weekend of 2024, with FP1 on Friday followed by qualifying for Saturday’s sprint event.

“It’s like a new circuit, honestly,” said Berra when asked by Motorsport.com about the return to China. “Because we have new cars, new tyres, the 18-inch [rims].

“The track was really not used in five years, it was just used for one race per year or something like that. So, it will be really green and quite dirty, although obviously, they will clean the track.

“And we need to understand even from tarmac measurement pre-event how it has changed.

“In the past, it was quite rough in terms of both micro and macro roughness. We need to understand how ageing has gone in the last years.

“It’s a good challenge for us, it’s interesting. The other thing is that after five years, it’s even a sprint race, with just free practice.

“So not much data, and even for the teams it will be a big challenge, not just for us, but for the teams even more probably.”

Despite not sending engineers in advance to study the track, Berra remains confident in the compound choices that Pirelli made.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have any person available to do it,” he said of the lack of an early inspection. “So we’ll do that directly on Wednesday.

“Anyway, it doesn’t change too much, because the selection is already made. We made let’s say a middle range selection, so C2, C3, C4, which covers us from any possibility. C5 was really too soft, and C1 probably too conservative, considering the track.”

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