Jeddah, insights from the initial free practice
The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend kicks off with a decidedly exploratory session. The high-speed and front-end demanding track provides engineers with an opportunity to confirm the performance of the cars, which have only been on the Sakhir circuit so far, with a completely different morphology.
Conservative Ferrari
Thus, the first session was used by those who still needed to work on correlation, like Ferrari, to gather useful data. Partly for this reason, and partly because the Jeddah track is still very “green” at the beginning of the weekend, the SF-24 presented itself with the same medium-to-high downforce rear wing seen in Bahrain. This suggests that a new specification with lower downforce will debut in the second session but remains shrouded in mystery. Looking at the data collected in the first session, it became clear that the Maranello team was still working extensively on data acquisition, including a power unit mapping that is decidedly more conservative than the competition.
Source: formulapassion.it
We compared the laps of Max Verstappen (first as always), Fernando Alonso, George Russell, and Charles Leclerc to try to find some insights from the first on-track session, combining it with our impressions gathered during the live broadcast. The most noticeable data is the linear growth in the gap of Charles Leclerc compared to all others in all straight sections. This confirms an overall deficiency in power delivery, explainable only by a very conservative mapping. Ferrari’s high downforce level is also noticeable in every corner, but especially in the medium-to-high-speed mixed section from turn 8 to turn 12, where Charles Leclerc, ahead of Verstappen and Alonso, stands out. In this section, the car that seemed to struggle the most is the Mercedes, with Russell consistently slower in all these high-speed stretches in almost every lap, despite posting excellent lap times.
Aggressive Mercedes
The impression is, therefore, that Mercedes is currently running with a very aggressive setup, significantly unloaded, with very low ride heights, aiming to prevail in high-speed sections. It remains to be seen if this will be confirmed in the second free practice session. In the Red Bull camp, the start has certainly been positive, despite some obvious setup changes still needed.
Red Bull continues to impress
The RB20 has shown excellent performance both in corners and on straights, although not with the incredible disproportion seen in 2023, where the RB19 dominated with over 10 km/h higher speeds in all references, be it in slow or fast sections. The section where Max Verstappen seems to gain a lot compared to everyone else for now is the last fast chicane, comprising turns 22, 23, and 24. Max consistently tackles this section with more speed than anyone else, allowing him to achieve excellent times in the third sector. We highlight this because it’s a distinctive section for Max Verstappen and Red Bull, always capable of making a difference in that section since racing on this track. Regarding Alonso, we notice significant clipping on the straights but a very competitive lap time, securing the second position. The same Spaniard had mentioned in Bahrain that the Aston Martin program regularly involves using more aggressive engine maps and lower fuel quantities in the first free practice session. Therefore, it seems that the data analysis confirms that the Silverstone car was indeed on the track under very different conditions than Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari. There is, therefore, great interest in the second free practice session, which will take place in conditions much closer to those of qualifying and the race, and should start providing more truthful answers regarding on-track values, including setups and aerodynamic configurations.
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