With the only free practice session now completed, we finally have a first glimpse of what we might see across the two races of the weekend. The chequered flag has fallen on the single practice session, giving us an initial picture of what awaits in this penultimate round of the 2025 Formula 1 season. During FP1 in Qatar, all the top teams carried out a short race-pace simulation, providing engineers with crucial data. Here is the full analysis.
What to expect from Qatar
The Losail circuit, at least on paper and based on previous editions, suits the characteristics of McLaren extremely well. The very high temperatures make tyre management one of the most important aspects of the weekend. Adding to this, Oscar Piastri has always been extremely competitive in Qatar. The results from the practice session confirmed this once again: Piastri finished in first place, with Lando Norris in second, and both created a significant gap to the first of the chasing cars.
Max Verstappen started the qualifying simulation slightly on the back foot, ending the session in seventh place, but last year’s performances obviously do not take him out of contention for the top positions. Ferrari begin the weekend further down the order, with Charles Leclerc in eighth – despite having achieved a podium here – and Lewis Hamilton in twelfth.
The race pace of the top teams
In the table below are all the lap times completed by the drivers of the four top teams during their short race-pace simulation. All of them ran on the hard tyres and, as usual, we do not know the fuel loads, nor whether the simulations were done with a Sunday-race configuration, which would involve a higher fuel quantity, or with a lighter load intended for the Saturday sprint.
As we can see, Max Verstappen and both Mercedes drivers began more slowly, starting in the low 1:26s or high 1:25s before dipping under the 1:25 barrier in the final laps. McLaren, on the other hand, started extremely strongly: both drivers reached the 1:24s after just a few laps and repeated that pace for several laps, clearly demonstrating that tyre management on the MCL39 remains outstanding.
Ferrari did not complete many laps. The team spent much of the session in the garage working to find the best possible setup for a car that, judging from the onboard footage, looked very unstable.
With degradation expected to be brutal under the floodlights and two races to contest, McLaren head into the Sprint weekend as clear favourites – but Max Verstappen’s late-race pace shows the championship leader is far from out of the fight, and Mercedes aren’t rolling over either. Ferrari, on the other hand, have a mountain of work ahead before lights out tomorrow.
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