Following a tough qualifying session in which the young Brit managed to put his McLaren in P7 for tomorrow’s inaugural Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Lando Norris has discussed his opinions on the circuit, which completed construction work just days before the cars hit the track for the first time.

While Norris likes the kerbs found around the track, he believes the exit kerb of turn ten could pose a potential risk for F2 cars.

“The kerbs here I think are good, obviously they're not like the standard FIA kerbs. I guess the only tricky one is the exit of turn ten,” he said. 

“What makes it tricky is it’s at a really weird angle [to the track]. It’s quite a weird one to run because you have to come on and come off and come on if that makes sense. 

“The shape of it is really odd according to how you run out onto an exit kerb, you feel like a straight exit kerb would have suited it better.”

He continued to highlight the potential risk involved with that particular kerb.

“I think it’s quite dangerous, maybe not so much for us but for F2, it’s extremely dangerous this kind of kerb here and I think a standard FIA exit kerb would have been better, but everywhere else I think the kerbs are fine.”

Continuing to discuss track safety, Norris pointed out that any crash which may happen would likely be quite big and dangerous, due to the high speed nature of the circuit as well as the abundance of blind corners.

When asked about the speed disparity between preparation laps and hot laps, the McLaren driver had this to say.

“I think on the prep laps it’s actually very fast. There’s nothing wrong with them here, cool down laps is what becomes a little bit more dangerous. I don’t know, you can say yes but then something can suddenly happen and then everyone’s gonna be like 'I told you so", so it’s tricky.

“If there’s gonna be a crash here, realistically it’s probably gonna be quite a big crash, especially if it’s in the faster sections or sector one or the two chicanes like where Charles [Leclerc] crashed.”

Norris went on to discuss the similarities some have drawn between the circuit and the popular but notoriously dangerous Macau Circuit. Norris discounted these comparisons highlighting not only a stark difference in track layout, but also a wildly different track surface and level of grip between the two circuits.

“I think compared to Macau it’s still very different. Macau is a lot tighter even than here. Here there is also runoff in a decent amount of the places, Macau has literally nothing, it’s just the wall everywhere. 

“There’s that and also how smooth the track, people make mistakes at Macau cause of the bumps and there’s the crevice on the track where it’s cambered and not cambered, you have different tarmacs and everything whereas here it’s probably one of the smoothest circuits we’ve ever been to, definitely that plays a big part.”

Norris also went on to explain he does not expect the race start to be any more difficult than any other circuit, quipping he hoped that the driving standards of F1 drivers would be higher than those in F2.

“I think the same as every track to be honest. I don’t think it’s too different to most circuits and I would just hope the level of drivers in Formula 1 is just slightly higher than the level of the ones in Formula 2.”