March 7, 2024
planetf1.com
Less than one week after the first race of the season, F1 is traveling to Saudi Arabia for more. Bahrain gave us what we expected: Red Bull dominance, a Max Verstappen win, Ferrari’s limited competence, and a very close midfield. Jeddah’s conditions are quite different to Bahrain’s, so this weekend will give us a clearer picture of the 2024 cars and their strengths. Here is everything you need to know for the 2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix:
Weekend Schedule (in EST):
Practice 1: Thursday 3/7, 8:30-9:30 AM
Practice 2: Thursday 3/7, 12:00-1:00 PM
Practice 3: Friday 3/8, 8:30-9:30 AM
Qualifying: Friday 3/8, 12:00-1:00 PM
Race: Saturday 3/9, 12:00 PM
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| Jeddah Corniche Circuit formula1.com |
The Jeddah Corniche Circuit is one of the longest and fastest tracks on the F1 calendar. Drivers spend almost 75% of their lap at full throttle as they weave through the 27 corners, 20 of which are taken at full speed, and 3 DRS zones. This limited number of braking points, along with the narrow and caged in nature of the track, make overtaking extremely difficult. One of the few opportunities for overtaking is at Turn 1 because, as the track’s slowest corner, it forces drivers to brake hard as they come out of the start-finish DRS zone. The 2024 cars have not yet been tested on high speed circuits like Jeddah, so it should be interesting to see how the grid pans out.
Red Bull, as always, is expected to maintain their dominance. As Verstappen’s 22 second lead showed us in Bahrain, that car is in a league of its own.
Ferrari also had a strong showing in Bahrain with Carlos Sainz clinching the final podium position. However, their cars greatly struggled with tire degradation, specifically at the rear. In the last race, you could see Charles Leclerc’s car sliding around as he threw himself into the corners. With the high speed, hot, and overall demanding conditions of Jeddah, I don’t see this track suiting the Ferrari car. There might still be hope for Ferrari fans though because the team said they focused on their performance at street tracks when developing their car. We will have to see how this weekend goes.
Compared to last year, McLaren had a great start to their season as Lando Norris finished P6 and Oscar Piastri finished P8. The team scored a total of 12 points at a track that they felt wouldn’t best suit them, so I have a good feeling about tracks that have historically suited them. Last year, McLaren was strongest at high-speed circuits like Suzuka, and probably would have done well in Jeddah if their car was ready. Watch, my McLaren year is coming. It is just off to a slow start.
Mercedes, while not happy with their performance, did relatively well in Bahrain. They were able to keep up in their fight with the McLarens and even outscored the papaya team by 4 points. Going into the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Mercedes seems to be worried about overheating. Despite Bahrain's relatively cool conditions, Mercedes still struggled with the temperature of their car. Jeddah is expected to be much warmer than Bahrain, so Mercedes might struggle again if they haven’t solved the issue.
At the back of the field, Haas had a pretty solid first race – Nico Hulkenberg made his way into Q3 of Qualifying and Kevin Magnussen fended off the squabbling RBs to keep P12 in the race. Although they didn’t score points, Haas got some promising results and seem to have hope for the first time in a long time.
Plagued with power unit cooling and steering wheel issues, Williams was not as promising as Haas. They have a pretty good team of people though, so I have faith that they will be able to recover. All I want to see from them this weekend is Alex Albon bringing out his Tire Whispering moves to pull off a one stop strategy.
This weekend will be interesting for Alpine because they are boss-less once again. Bahrain wasn’t a good look for the French team as Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly qualified on the back row and then finished 17th and 18th respectively. In response to this poor performance, technical director Matt Harman and head of aerodynamics Dirk de Beer resigned from their positions this past Monday and the team seems to be adopting a similar structure to McLaren’s design team – three technical directors splitting up the work. Perhaps these changes will help the team as they did at McLaren, but as I have been saying, teams don’t just improve overnight. I really feel that Alpine’s management needs to give the team at least three races to work together and improve before they begin ousting everyone.
The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix is always on the limit, pushing the cars and drivers to their breaking points. I am excited to see how the cars perform in these new conditions, and whether or not McLaren will have the pace I am expecting.
Happy Race Weekend!
- Divya
Where I got these
from: