"Out of control" bumps could lead to spine damage warns four-time world champion.

From the outset, the purpose-built track, which was inspired by the European tradition of sculpting the circuit to the contours of the land and draws from several European circuits, has punished drivers with its bumps. However, Verstappen claims the situation is worse than ever.

"It was extremely badly bumpy," said the Dutchman, having revealed he watched a WEC race at the track earlier in the year. "So I'm not really looking forward to that, I'll probably need to order a new spine after the weekend, or become like Robocop. It's crazy!" he laughed.

"You know, I was joking about that, of course, in the last race," he continued. "But it's not really a joke to be honest, because we mentioned this already for years that it's actually getting a bit out of control. And I'm sure that tomorrow is going to be quite tough to find the right (set-up) compromises around this track.

"Last year, for example, you pull around 5, 6G in a corner, but I had some impacts, like vertical load, which was like over 9G on my spine, which I can tell you is really not fun, and the older you get, you think about that more and more.

"That's not what you want. And with these cars, especially under braking, you bottom out way harder because when the wings close and the right hand comes down, under braking, it's actually a very stressful moment. And I know around here, in some places, it's very bumpy under braking. Especially when it's like these kind of awkward bumps, not just bumps from the track getting colder, but just going, I don't know, the surface underneath the soil just moving up and down.

"It's very hard to expect, or if you're like a tiny bit offline, you don't know what is there because no one really drives there sometimes. So, yeah, it's really not nice.

"I think sometimes people don't really understand that. Because, I can tell you from the checks that I've done from my spine, the bottom end doesn't look that great. I know that's part of racing. I know that can be part of sport, but it's, of course, also further damage from the cars that we had the last few years. And now, if we continue with driving, or finding this acceptable to drive on, then you are going to suffer with that much more. And people can say but there are worse sports out there for damage to parts of your body, for sure."

"If you build a new track now the FIA, the rules, the regulation of building a new track, the tolerances you have to be within are pretty small," said Lando Norris. "It certainly doesn't fit anywhere close to what those regulations are now, let's say, it's an old track, not a new track, it's pretty bad.

"There's a lot of places I need to take headache tablets before I go out," he added. "Simply because it's so bumpy and you're hitting your head pretty hard against the headrests and things because of the bumps, so it's certainly not a nice thing.

"But there's not much we can do," he admitted. "I mean we complain about it, so it's certainly brought up many, many times but there's only so much we can complain about things, but he's right. Certainly right."

"Yeah, it's bumpy, but I think it's just part of racing," said GPDA director, George Russell of the track that was completely resurfaced in 2024 in a bid to solve the problem. "I'd say my general view is F1 tracks probably need to be repaved every couple of years just to make it a bit more consistent, because we're going to tracks now where tarmac's coming up, it's falling apart, it's causing more issues than not.

"We're not an Indy car or an F2 car that run their ride heights reasonably high," he explained, "our ride height's 10mm at the end of the straight, a centimetre from the ground, so any tiny bump you really feel it.

"The side profile of the tyres now, since we've been at the 18-inch, is substantially smaller," he continued. "The circumference of the tyre is the same, the circumference of the rim is far greater, so you've lost all of that effective suspension in the tyre, which was a damper, which we kind of don't have anymore. So, again, not ideal, but there's not much we can do."