"Last year, you pulled around 5-6G in a corner, but I had some impacts like vertical load, which was like over 9G on my spine, which I can tell you is really not fun. And especially the older you get you think about that more and more. I can tell you from the checks that I've done from my spine, the bottom end doesn't look that great.

"I know that's part of racing, that can be part of sport, but it's also further damage from the cars that we had the last few years, and now if we continue finding this acceptable to drive on you are going to suffer with that much more.

"And people can say there are worse sports out there for damage to parts of your body for sure, but that's why I'm not doing them."

Shifting ground on the site of the circuit causes the appearance of some pretty significant bumps over time. A big resurfacing project in 2022 took care of some of the issues, but more have appeared.

He added: "You can use the excuse that the soil is the problem, but then you should have known that and you need to make sure that you reinforce it more. Over time they've been grinding a little bit here and there, but you're just putting a plaster on the big problem.

"That's just what's coming underneath. That's what you need to actually tackle in the first place. But that means you need to really fully open up the track. That costs a lot of money and time but, honestly, that's the only way to get rid of it because these bumps are not natural and they are out of control."

"There's a lot of places I need to take headache tablets before I go out, simply because it's so bumpy and you're hitting your head pretty hard against the headrests and things because of the bumps, so it's certainly not a nice thing.

"But there's not much we can do. I mean, we complain about it, so it's certainly brought up many, many times, but there's only so much we can complain about things. But he's certainly right."

COTA has a contract to host an annual race up to and including 2034. George Russell agreed with his fellow drivers and suggested promoters should be forced to resurface F1 circuits "every couple of years" to maintain standards.

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