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This Grand Prix – Saudi Arabia

Hello, welcome to This Grand Prix the pilot edition, apologies’ for technical issues which prevented last weekend’s edition.  written, and produced in the same way as our sister post. We will bring you news and analysis from Sakhir… but it’s written as the story developed so FP1-FP2-Fp3-Qualifying-race, meaning there may be contradictions.

General News

This weekend race went ahead as planned despite an attack on an oil depo in Jeddah carried out by Houthi rebels in Yemen. In the early hours following a union meeting of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association the drivers agreed to continue with the race weekend.

The oil depo was seven miles away from the circuit owned by sponsor Aramco, was set ablaze during first practice in Saudi and a large black smoke cloud could be seen from the circuit.

The fire was still burning late on Friday night and there was still smoke pouring into the sky on Saturday morning.

A statement admitting a “difficult and stressful day” and “human concerns” in the wake of a missile attack on a nearby oil facility during Friday practice, but confirming they would continue after being assured that “security measures were being elevated to the maximum”.

There have been reports that some drivers wanted to strike over safety concerns before agreeing to go ahead with the weekend as planned. On Saturday morning, F1 and the FIA reiterated that final practice and qualifying would go ahead as planned later, with Sunday’s race to follow.

Stefano Domenicali has dismissed claims that Formula 1 has put commercial success over morality. He told Sky Sports “I don’t think that is a right consideration. No one can judge our morality, to be honest. It is a matter of putting in place all the things that have to be considered.”

“We are not blind, but we should not forget one thing: this country and the sport is taking a massive step forward. You cannot pretend to change a culture of more than a millennium in the blink of an eye.”

The GPDA added “A large variety of opinions were shared and debated and, having listened not only to the Formula 1 powers but also to the Saudi government ministers who explained how security measures were being elevated to the maximum, the outcome was a resolution that we would practice and qualify today and race tomorrow.”

Saudi Arabia has been at war with the Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen alongside the country recognised government since 2014 with the conflict in stalemate. However, the teams say there must be a discussion about the long term future of the race, whether or not continuing in the country in the right thing.

Williams team principal Jost Capito said: “We are not in charge of the calendar, but the situation here is for many years. I think there was a missile attack during the FE race at the beginning of last year, and there were no worries about coming here at the end of last year. So the situation for this weekend hasn’t changed at all.”

Following Schumacher’s crash and the missile strike the GPDA says “there will need to be discussions” to assess if Saudi Arabia has a place on future calendars. This weekend has had a feeling I have not had probably since Suzuka / Sochi in 2014 or Sakhir in 2012.

Perez, who will line up on pole for this afternoon’s Grand Prix, reckoned: “I think there’s definitely some considerations that we will have to do as a group and see what’s best for the sport going forwards.”

Weekend recap

Charles Leclerc was fastest in FP1 setting a 38.778 on soft tyres which put him a tenth ahead of the Red Bull of Max Verstappen, with the Alfa Romeo of Valtteri Bottas putting his Alfa Romeo third late in the session. Ferrari power looked decent, with Leclerc likely to have gone faster but he made a mistake on his final lap brushing the wall on his fastest lap.

Leclerc remained the man to beat in FP2 once again a tenth ahead of Verstappen, who managed to go four-hundredths faster than Carlos Sainz. In that session, both Ferrari’s and Red Bull’s were covered by less than three tenths which could lead to another close race on Sunday.

Leclerc also topped FP3 but the Dutchman narrowed the gap to thirty-three hundredths of a second with teammate Sergio Perez third fastest. But the surprise was Mercedes, cars with their PU occupied the bottom seven positions and Lewis Hamilton was only eleventh.

Perez took his maiden pole position setting a new record for the number of races started without a pole position after going two-hundredths faster than Leclerc. Teammate Verstappen described his qualifying as “terrible.” But the two main stories from qualifying were a huge crash for Mick Schumacher in Q2 while he didn’t start the race Haas driver was “physically fine”, and/ the shock Q1 elimination of Hamilton.

A thrilling battle between Verstappen and Leclerc defined the race, with Verstappen winning by half a second once the world champion had lunged past the Ferrari on lap forty-six. The battle was almost farcical at stages as both drivers tried to stop and break the DRS advantage, it saw them trading each other off. Leclerc had planned to run longer into the race with the belief of extra pace, which was turned on the head when Nicolas Latifi crashed bringing out the safety car on lap seventeen.

Mercedes

Last weekend’s race in Sakhir has been described as remarkable by Lewis Hamilton after the team finished third and fourth, thanks to Red Bull’s dramatic engine failures saw Hamilton and teammate George Russell finish a “remarkable” third and fourth. The feeling is that in the early part of this season until they get these fixes they have been talking about since testing, then the consensus is then they should enter this title race, but we know they can’t wait too long or chances of fighting for the championship will be gone

After qualifying on Saturday, CEO and team principal Toto Wolff says Mercedes’ current performance is “totally unacceptable”. He was  also was adamant that there was no “huge set-up” differences between Hamilton and Russell’s cars, but “they were big enough to have dramatic consequence of the performance of the car, between going out in Q1 and making it solid into Q3.

Hamilton never expected to receive an apology in the FIA’s investigation to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, but called the acknowledgement of human error “a positive step”. CEO and team principal Toto Wolff felt there had been “a massive step change to what we have seen before” from the FIA by releasing the report.

On Friday Mercedes were also carrying out experiments to try and get on top of their porpoising problems but say they have not helped find a solution to the issue. They were adamant last weekend once they managed to resolve these issues they can join the battle more convincingly with Red Bull and Ferrari.

trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said: “We tried a few more experiments to understand the bouncing issue here, some which made it worse, some which helped, but we don’t yet have a solution to make the problem go away.” But Hamilton says the team still needed to improve its straight line performance.

The weekend didn’t get better a car described as ‘undrivable’ by Hamilton saw him knocked out in Q1 on pure pace, not including not starting or crashing, since 2009. He says a setup change was the reason for his lack of pace compared to team-mate George Russell – who qualified sixth – and was downbeat over his chances in Sunday’s race.

Asked if he was surprised, Hamilton replied: “Yeah, of course. [The setup] was looking good in P3, I tried to progress in a similar direction and maybe went too far. The car was just undrivable, and so nervous.”

Hamilton said his car had never “been that bad” and also hinted that he may look to start from the pit-lane, which would allow Mercedes to break parc-ferme conditions and change his set-up again. Its surprising and highlights problems for Mercedes are probably bigger problems and again after the race Hamilton highlighted the lack of pace.

Hamilton has described his tenth place in the race was described by him as “gutting” he ran very long around 75% of the race on one set of tyres. But the timing of the late VSC and the closure of the pit lane after Daniel Ricciardo ground to a halt in the pit lane prevented the Englishman from making his pit stop.

Saying “I couldn’t keep up with the Haas at the end, the power they have… they came sling-shotting past me when I overtook Magnussen earlier on in the race. We’ve got a lot of work to do but I know I’ve got a great team, we’ll keep our heads down and try and improve.”

Red Bull

Max Verstappen says it was “very disappointing” to retire from second place late in Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix, warning that the lost points could be “very important” in this year’s title fight. If the battle this season is Red Bull-Ferrari-Mercedes as we are all expecting, the loss of points could be key.

The race was an underwhelming start to Verstappen’s title defence with main rivals Ferrari and Mercedes finishing in the top four positions. He says while disappointing the loss of points in what is expected to be another close championship. Going into the weekend the team believed it fixed the fuel pump issue which caused the retirements.

Verstappen says he missed out on pole because he was lacking grip, but he described it as like “driving on a different tyre.” Looking back at his qualifying he was in the top five and we were seeing many drivers needing to do these double prep laps to get the tyres into the right operating window.

The Dutchman explained “Q1 and Q2 was very good. Even my last [lap] after the long red flag, I went out on that old set and it was looking really good. And so I was very comfortable going into Q3. But then I put that first tyre set on and I had no grip, it felt like I was driving on a different tyre.”

Looking ahead to the race, Verstappen believed the car looked particularly good in terms of top speed, which he felt would be useful in Sunday’s race owing to Jeddah’s high-speed nature.

Ferrari

Charles Leclerc says Ferrari’s one-two last week was the perfect way to respond following two years that “have been incredibly difficult”. The Monacan fended off Red Bull’s Max Verstappen on multiple occasions to win in Bahrain. We knew that in testing the Ferrari had looked quick and a genuine title contender, this is good as F1 its long been said that a competitive Ferrari is good for the sport.

Ferrari had limited long-run data from FP2 after Leclerc and Carlos Sainz hit the wall, but both drivers looked consistent across two different tyre compounds. You need to wonder how not essentially not doing their long runs, will impact their performance in the race, we know it was tight last weekend in Bahrain.

Speaking about the battle in the race with Verstappen, Leclerc said there was nothing more he could do to hold of Verstappen. The almost farcical battle throughout the race which was led largely by the Monacan, saw both drivers hound each other before Verstappen final found a way past with straight-line speed advantage.

After the race, Leclerc said he and his Ferrari team “did everything right” in the race, which included a clever dummy pitstop call to force erstwhile leader Sergio Perez into an earlier pitstop.

Leclerc told Sky Sports, “I don’t think there was much more I could do. There was one opportunity that we missed a little bit with the yellow flag in Turn 1, so we didn’t have the DRS there and it could have been an opportunity to at least be alongside Max at the end of the straight.”

Explaining the gamesmanship which included slowing down on purpose to force Verstappen’s overshoot ahead of the DRS detection line, was down to his realisation that his top speed deficit would otherwise make it hard to keep the Dutchman behind.

McLaren

Team principal Andreas Seidl admits that the recent focus on the team’s brake cooling issues has slowed the progress of other new parts to the track. McLaren really looked to struggle last weekend in Bahrain, which is a very different circuit to Jeddah but still both are high-speed circuits.

The issues first emerged three weeks ago in the test while they brought an upgrade for last weekend the team couldn’t bring upgrades to this race weekend. But with Lando Norris seventh in FP2 there were suggestions that the team may have found a more competitive set-up for the Jeddah weekend.

Seidl admitted that efforts to address the brake duct issue have had an ongoing impact. Saying “Let’s say the team was very, very busy to fully focus on this mission. Which took a lot of capacity away for doing in parallel other things as well, which is obviously a bit of a compromise.”

Alpine

Going into FP1 the French manufacturer moved Fernando Alonso onto his second ICE of the season because of a suspected sealing issue was discovered after last weekend’s race. Although its expected to be fixed it has to be slightly concerning on reliability after just one race, and only having one team powered by Renault puts them at a disadvantage in finding these issues

Alpha Tauri

Pierre Gasly believes he may have taken a step towards an early engine-related grid penalty because a suspected battery failure triggered a “barbecue.” The Frenchman was the first retirement from the Red Bull powered teams, this would go onto effect Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen.

He hinted that the team will have to discard one of the two Honda energy stores he is allocated for the season after just one race weekend, which would almost certainly guarantee a grid penalty as he won’t be able to do the remaining races without a further change.

Williams

Alex Albon has been given a three-place grid penalty for the Australian Grand Prix, following the Williams contact with Lance Stroll at Turn One on lap forty-eight. As Stroll tried to pass him the British Thai driver dived down the inside in a bid to get eleventh place.

Stroll was hence tapped into a spin at Turn 2, but was able to get back on track and complete the race – albeit last and a lap down on winner Max Verstappen. The stewards decided that Albon was responsible for the incident and gave him a three-place grid for Melbourne.

Albon has also been handed two penalty points on his super license, which was previously clean owing to his season away from F1.

Haas

Mick Schumacher scored his best result in Bahrain, but he was still disappointed as he believes that he could have done better in Bahrain delivers the perfect proof of the promise he feels he has right now.

He told Motorsport.com, “I guess it shows that even though we had our best result, we’re still unhappy in a way, and that just proves the point that we have so much more potential. It’s great to be disappointed and dreaming of something bigger because that just motivates you, even more, to try and do your best every single time, and even go beyond that.”

Schumacher faces a real challenge this year with new teammate Kevin Magnussen, which should give us a better idea of how good he is. I think its more about developing the German into a world champion we know he has both the genetics and results to be a mega star.

However Schumacher’s crash in qualifying when he suffered a high speed crash after losing control at Turn Ten ruled him out of the race. The Haas being  virtually destroyed by the side-on impact but following a lengthy extrication a first check-up at the medical centre revealed no physical injuries.

Full Race Report

Results Summary

Championship Standings

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