As Melbourne gears up to host the F1 season-opening Australian GP at the Albert Park Circuit in March, officials have revealed that Turn 6 has undergone several modifications. These changes come in the wake of George Russell’s high-profile crash on the penultimate lap of the race in 2024, which saw the W15 bounce back onto the track and end up on its side.
Prior to this incident, a massive shunt resulted in Alex Albon bringing out the red flag during the first practice session. The damage his chassis sustained was so significant that it left Williams with only one car for the remainder of the Grand Prix weekend. In fact, the Thai driver had suffered a high-speed crash at the same corner in 2023, with his FW45 ricocheting back onto the track and the race being suspended by a red flag.
F1 drivers, however, are not the only ones who have found Turn 6 at Albert Park difficult to navigate. During the Formula 2 feature race in Melbourne last year, the net race leader, Dennis Hauger, lost control of his car at Turn 6, crashed into the barriers, and dropped immediately out of the race.
F1 drivers called for Australian GP Turn 6 track reconfiguration
The sheer rise in the number of major incidents at the Australian GP sparked serious concerns about track safety last year. Subsequently, several F1 drivers voiced their opinions regarding the problematic features of Turn 6 and its surroundings and called for alterations to the corner.
This specific section of the track poses additional risks due to the angle of the barrier on the left-hand side that rebounds cars onto the racing surface. To this day, the likelihood of fatalities occurring from a moving vehicle(s) crashing into a stationary one(s) on blind, high-speed sections of race tracks is rather high, despite the safety improvements implemented by the FIA over the years.
With regard to coming around the reprofiled high-speed Turn 6 in 2024, Nico Hülkenberg highlighted the hazard of running into a stationary car in the middle of the circuit.
“We’ve seen that corner last year, also with Alex [Albon], who crashed there. That barrier puts a car back on the circuit.
“We need to look at that and change something there for the future because that’s really not good when you come around that corner and you have a car in the middle of the track.”
Likewise, mirroring the apprehension of fellow drivers about the recent collisions at Albert Park, Carlos Sainz underscored the urgency of re-assessing the configuration of Turn 6 and introducing necessary modifications to prevent serious accidents from happening in the future.
“That corner needs to be reviewed. It’s not the first time that after a collision the car comes back into the track. It’s a corner where we’re doing 250 km/h [155 mp/h] and it’s blind, and I just don’t like the last few incidents that we’ve seen in this corner, also in other categories.”
Chief events officer for Australian GP Corporation addresses Turn 6 modifications
Just three years after Albert Park saw its Turn 6 widen by more than 7.5 meters to the drivers’ right to increase speed and encourage overtaking on the following straight, it has undergone further modifications to mitigate safety concerns.
Speaking to Speedcafe, Tom Mottram, chief events officer for the Australian GP Corporation, said, “Turn 6 was one of the main track realignment changes we actually made to speed up that corner at the start of the DRS zone along the back straight.
“What we’ve done, and where we’ve landed with the FIA is there’s no changes to drivers’ right at all on Turn 6; it’s really all happening on drivers’ left.“
Elaborating on the specifics, Mottram stated that they have modified the exit kerbs. He also mentioned three other changes: removal of the artificial turf behind the kerbs, realignment of the barriers, and extension of the line of TecPro barriers.
“There’s about a 90-metre kerb along there [at the exit of Turn 6]. In the past about 50-odd metres off that was a bevel kerb, which is more on the entry to [Turn] 7.
“What we’ve done now is actually just agree with the FIA that we change that whole kerb to a negative kerb the whole way, so you’re not having that kind of accelerating off that kerb once you hit the bevel.
“We added half a metre of concrete verge before the gravel trap, again, just to allow a little bit of leeway before getting into the gravel trap.
Exclusive Pit Debrief pictures of the changes
The green kerbs are the old ones, while the new ones are yet to the painted.
Photo Credit: Pit Debrief
“And we’ve also moved back the barrier line there, the tyre bundles, the TecPro barriers, by two metres and added more TecPro barriers at the end of that run and smoothened the taper to try and avoid that kind of bounce back into the track incidents that we’ve seen.”
Albert Park changes prioritising safety while taking into account F1 2026 regulations
At the Australian GP, track limits at Turn 6 will reportedly not be an issue, given that the margin from the edge of the racing surface to the gravel is only 1.5 meters, even accounting for the tarmac strip behind the kerb.
The rationale behind the alterations follows the intention of improving safety by marginally slowing the drivers at the fast right-hander while maintaining the character of the circuit.
With F1 cars expected to experience lower cornering speeds when the new set of regulations comes into effect in 2026, officials in Melbourne were hesitant to go all out on changes ahead of the 2025 F1 Australian GP.
“We could slow it down a lot by completely changing that apex, but you lose the characteristics of that turn,” Mottram admitted.
“It’s certainly a consideration where you don’t want to make a whole bunch of changes for one additional year, but safety is always paramount, that will always take first and foremost and then take each change year by year.”
The Australian GP will return to its traditional position as the first race of the F1 calendar this season. Following a change in schedule to avoid a clash with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Albert Park will host the season opener instead of Bahrain for the first time since 2019 on the weekend of March 14-16.
