Ericsson says revised Red Bull Ring kerbs are "silly"

Several kerbs around the Austrian circuit have been modified for this year's race in order to stop drivers from going off-track to gain a time advantage.

Negative kerbs have been installed on the entry of Turn 1 and 2, with extra 'sausage kerbs' fitted at the exit as well.

Ericsson admitted he was baffled by the changes.

"I was on the track walk and I think it looks a bit silly," said Ericsson of the kerbs. "Why don't they just make the kerb and then grass?

"I don't understand why they had to make a kerb and an extra kerb and an extra kerb again. We will see tomorrow, I guess, how much of the kerb you can use, but I think there are going to be discussions about track limits."

Manor rival Pascal Wehrlein said the extra kerbs were "really strange" and fears cars will fly off track if they hit them at high speed.

"The first corner and the last two corners, they are always trying to go as wide as possible," he said. "But I just saw they put some yellow kerbs there, some yellow bumps, really strange.

"Not sure if that's working - of course you don't want to drive over them, but if you do by mistake, for sure it will damage the car.

"Because the last corner, the second last corner, we are driving 180, 190, 200... so we go straight to Graz airport there."

He added: "You have to decide early if you can make the corner or not and if not, you need to go straight - because if you drive over the sausages, for sure you will damage the car, I'm sure."

Ericsson says the discussion about tracks limits is not positive for the sport and believes a definitive solution should be found.

"This is one of the shortest tracks we have, so every hundredth you can find makes a big difference and usually here come qualifying it's really tight.

"That means you need to use every bit of the track as possible, so I'm sure tomorrow a lot of people will explore and see how can you can use the track exist and how far you can go until you lose time or get the laptime deleted.

"I'm not a fan of even having that discussion. I think for drivers, for teams, for fans, for everyone... we shouldn't have that. We need to find a way to find something."

Additional reporting by Jonathan Noble and Oleg Karpov

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