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F1 Mexican GP: 'I think walls are pretty good' - Ricciardo backs Ecclestone on deterrents

Daniel Ricciardo believes Bernie Ecclestone is right to suggest F1 needs to be more of a challenge for drivers and thinks there should be deterrents when people make mistakes, rather than large run-off areas.

His comments come after Ecclestone said the sport needs to increase the 'danger' element and should "build 40cm walls around the corners".

"It's tough because we always talk about safety but I think walls are actually pretty good," Ricciardo said ahead of this weekend's Mexican Grand Prix.

"Even like Monaco, if you slide into the wall it's just there and that's it. I like the idea of walls that they are a permanent thing.

"It's like Lewis [Hamilton] in Monaco when he was defending me and cut through the chicane, if there was a wall there, happy days, I win the race. I'm not a fan of the real open stuff, at least have something there that is a deterrent."

Ricciardo also revealed that deterrents and large run-off areas are often chatted about in the driver briefings.

"Yeah we always talk about it in driver briefings. Whether it's bringing some gravel back or these sort of speed bump kerb things are doing the job in some areas. So it's improving, but I think it's more when a driver can just run off wide and come back on track and not really pay a penalty. That's where it's a bit where you're like at least have some penalty to pay," he continued.

"At the end of the day if you go off wide, you lock a brake or whatever but you've missed the apex, you've made a mistake so you should lose some time for making a mistake.

"I think that's the thing that frustrates me more, it allows too many of us to be less than perfect and it makes us look less good as well if we're always making mistakes and not paying any penalty for it."

Championship leader Nico Rosberg, however, is less taken with the idea of adding walls and stresses it would be wrong to "turn back time on safety".

"Well, my opinion is that there are ten other areas which we should look at before... if we want to make the sport even better than it is before we start looking at turning back time on safety. That would be my view on that," confirmed the Mercedes pilot.

Force India's Sergio Perez agrees, but adds some circuits do need to be more challenging: "I certainly agree with Nico. There are so many more areas where we can improve the sport before starting to put safety at risk.

"[But] I think we can definitely make the circuits a bit more challenging for the drivers, not necessarily with walls but making the driver pay for mistakes if you go off, having a gravel trap and losing time, that kind of thing I think is good for the sport because that forces the drivers not to make any mistakes." 

Zdroj: crash.net