Tuesday, 11 October 2011 22:57
Last year was obviously the first race in Korea and while we had a pretty interesting race day, it was good to be in another new country and keep taking our sport to new places. This year I’m sure the whole event will step up another level and be even better and I’m looking forward to getting back there to see how the track has progressed, and how we’ll do now we have a car that gives us a chance to fight in the race. The circuit itself is interesting – it has the classic long straight with a tight turn at the end that gives a good chance to overtake, and Pirelli’s tyre choice of the softs and the supersofts and the high degradation levels we expect to see will make strategy even more important.
Korea is an interesting track in that you go from one sector with large run off areas to another that’s more like a street circuit, with close walls and no margin for error. Maximising outright pace is pretty critical as the long straight out of Turn 2 with the very tight right at the end is a good chance to overtake, but then the rest of the lap is a mix of low and medium speed corners so we have to find a balance that gives us the best of both worlds.
One obvious difference to a lot of the circuits is the fact that it’s anti-clockwise. That doesn’t really affect the set-up but it can have an effect on some of the drivers. We all train our neck muscles to cope with the demands of racing, but as most of the tracks run clockwise we have to work a bit harder on making sure we don’t have any problems, like you can do through the triple left-hander of Turn 8.
From a tyre perspective I think it might be similar to Japan. We have the softs and the supersofts and as degradation is high in Korea, particularly from Turn 10 to Turn 17, I think strategy and tyre wear will play a critical role. Last year it was obviously soaking so we didn’t see the tyre strategies play out, but I think if it’s dry this year we will, and it’ll make for a fascinating race.
Credit: Heikki Kovalainen (www.heikkikovalainen.com)
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