Why Paul Ricard's resurfacing is leading to the F1 car kerb-clattering

Zaffelli detailed the ways in which his team’s reprofiling of the circuit has helped drivers attack the circuit more, as caution is thrown to the wind. “The biggest remodelling we did was between Turns One through to Seven,” he says. “Turn Seven was previously off-camber, on camber, offcamber. Then in 30 metres this changed to on, off, on. We completely took this out, so now it’s totally off-camber.

“It is [now] easier to exit slower from Turn Seven and more difficult to lose the car, but this therefore means you have more confidence to overtake in Turn Eight.”

Zaffelli believes short term memories might be contributing to teams complaints about the “aggressive” kerbs.

“[Maybe it’s] because they don’t remember, as last year F1 was not at Paul Ricard, or perhaps its because they are used to other the tracks that are more gentle on the kerbs,” he comments.

Like the high abrasion off-circuit asphalt, the design of the heavy kerbs is unique to Le Castellet.

They are known as ‘Gurdjians’ in the circuit design industry, named after Phillipe Gurdjian, the former race driver and motor sport promoter, who took over the circuit to turn it into it the ‘Paul Ricard High Tech Test Track’.

“Paul Ricard is different in many respects to other circuits,” Zaffelli says. “When we became involved in the beginning, the idea of improving overtaking was proposed, but we tried to make subtle differences and modification rather than big ones [such as changing kerbs].”

One of the changes with the most obvious knock-on effects of Zaffelli’s redesign is the new ‘crown’ (a slight bump) installed at Turn Five.

“The reason [we were asked to install this] is because initially it [the asphalt] was very flat and a lot of water was standing there,” Zaffelli explains. “And there were no overtaking manoeuvres there, they were only happening at Turn Eight. So what we decided was to just build a proper crown there, to have the water going on the right-hand side.

“If you look at the cars going there now, you can see that some are lifting the right wheel in the air by a certain number of centimetres, depending on the setup of the car.

Zaffelli says as a result, driver skill can now displayed in a more obvious manner – and there’s one team which is getting the best out of it.

“Now, if you are good enough to stay outside Turn Four, you can go into Turn Five to avoid that sort of a jump,” Zaffelli explains.

“If you look at Hamilton and Bottas and the lines they’re doing [into Turn Five], they’re trying different lines because the Mercedes engineers understand the difference before and after [the resurfacing].

“You can see they’re trying to understand how to use the crown in different ways. When overtaking, you can either [stay outside the crown and] improve the steering of the car because you are unbalancing and using it just to make an oversteer, or you stay on the inside of it and make a ‘block pass’, because anyway you are faster if you stay inside.

“It’s very important in the race or the ‘battle’. When a track is done properly, in the end it’s up to the driver to exploit the opportunities. This will be magnified a lot at Zandvoort [also reprofiled and resurfaced by Dromo].”