The Friday in F1 Saudi Arabian GP was hectic after changes at Ferrari, while the pole battle saw Red Bull take centerstage.
The Friday in F1 Saudi Arabian GP started with a big news about Carlos Sainz unable to compete due to appendicitis with Ferrari drafting F2 racer and reserve Oliver Bearman as a replacement. The Brit had only one hour to prepare for the whole weekend.
And he did enough to be only 0.036s away from placing himself in Q3. For his first chance, Bearman did all what he could and is gunning for points. His teammate Charles Leclerc had a scrappy qualifying, but was pleased to secure a front-row finish.
It wasn’t as close to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who also did not improve his lap time on the second lap but his first was enough to score his first F1 pole in Saudi Arabian GP. His teammate Sergio Perez reckoned he took a step back from practice to lose out.
The race pace looks better but still Leclerc will be pushing as much. In the mix was Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, who looked to be in a better shape than what he did in Bahrain. But he is still not going overboard with the likes of McLaren and Mercedes around him.
George Russell admitted about mistake on his final lap which didn’t improve, while teammate Lewis Hamilton thought it was a better day after improvements. McLaren, meanwhile, used a different strategy as Lando Norris pointed out.
Verstappen: “I think in general, just the whole day, I felt a bit more comfortable with the car. The balance was a bit more together. Yeah, I could just push a little bit more. And then qualifying was quite nice. I mean, no real big problems, and I could just follow the track evolution a bit, so very happy with that. Yeah, my first lap in Q3, I think, was very nice. Maybe Turn 1, 2, and the last corner, I could have maybe improved a tiny amount, but overall, the car was just performing really nicely. I felt comfortable. I could push to the limit. And on a track like this, when you have that feeling, I think it helps to get a good lap time out of it. The second one, I had a little moment between 9 and 10, so I lost momentum.
“From there onwards also, I knew that the previous lap was very good, so I was like, I don’t want to risk potentially damaging the car for maybe matching the lap time again, if I would really put everything together. That’s why I just lost a bit of momentum there and a little bit out of the last corner. Once you see that you’re a bit down already on your lap time, on a street circuit especially, sometimes I guess it’s better to just finish the lap and just deal with it. Yesterday it felt good, even though I think the set-up we had yesterday was not as good as today. So I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Normally, we should have good race pace. And actually, of course, the degradation won’t be as high as in Bahrain. So, yeah, we’ll have to see how close everyone else is. But from our side, I think the car is set up well.”
Leclerc: “It’s good to be starting on the front row. However, today I didn’t really find the right feeling with the car. For some reason, with the new tyres, we didn’t have the car in the right place, which I hope that for tomorrow it will improve a little bit. For some reason, we had quite a lot of oversteer and just the rear is not quite ready. So in Q3, we tried something different. We went for a prep lap, which didn’t help at all. And then in the second lap, I put everything together and I don’t think there was much more. But today, the feeling wasn’t as good as what I had, what I was expecting, considering yesterday. I mean, I’m always optimistic, so we’ll try our best. However, we know that normally they have the upper hand and they have a bit more pace in the race than in qualifying. And looking at the gaps today it’s going to be a difficult one to get the top spot tomorrow. But I’ll do everything as always.”
Perez: “I think the whole day hasn’t been as good as yesterday. Somehow we took a step back from what we were doing yesterday, but it’s something that we have to understand, especially for tomorrow. I really hope that what we’ve done, hopefully tomorrow we will be in a better position come race day and be able to have a stronger race. I think it’s going to be a challenge. You know, I think racing here, it’s all about race pace, all about degradation. So I think the faster one tomorrow will finish in front. So it’s a track where you can overtake. It’s a place where you can race. So, yeah, there is a long way ahead of us tomorrow.”
Bearman: “I woke up this morning focusing on my F2 race, starting P10, trying to think, how can we maximise that. And then at some stage it was clear that I had to get in the F1 car. What a great opportunity of course, huge best wishes for Carlos and his recovery. But it’s a great moment and opportunity for me and I’m ready to maximise it. Bit disappointed with the qualifying, but overall I can’t be too disappointed. It was so close, so close. That’s why it hurts a bit more. I made a mistake on my first push [lap] so I had to do it on my second and the tyres aren’t really the best there, so my mistake and I’ll take that on the chin. Just bring the car back. Try and get some points, that would be a bonus, but build up my mileage, get some experience. It’s my first race, so I can’t expect much, and this is a really difficult track as well.”
Alonso: “It was fantastic for us, the one-lap performance in this car seems very strong. It was strong in Bahrain, it was strong in all the free practices. Here and now in qualifying we have confirmed we are now in the mix with McLaren, with Mercedes which is a bit of a surprise. In Bahrain we were strong on one lap and then finish in our natural position in the race, fifth fastest team behind the top four. So tomorrow we want to avoid that, we start P4 and hopefully we are not falling behind the Mercedes and the McLarens. [My race is] in the mirrors unfortunately at the moment, we have to have our feet on the ground. Five days ago we were clearly the fifth fastest team and I don’t think could have changed so rapidly. We qualified extremely well in the last two events. Now, we did some set-up changes to improve the race performance, we will only have the answer tomorrow night after finishing the race. Let’s see, I think it’s a defensive race tomorrow.”
Hamilton: “It was a very difficult day today. I was much happier in FP3, and the car was feeling much better than on Thursday. It was a real improvement, and I had a lot more confidence in the car. Unfortunately in qualifying, it felt similar to yesterday and I didn’t have the stability from the car that I needed. It was a struggle, and we were losing out particularly in the high-speed first sector.”
Norris: “A good day. I don’t think we could have asked for much more as a team, so I’m happy. I think we got the most out of the car. We went 4-2-1 with the tyres, which put us at a disadvantage in qualifying with one fewer set of tyres. That made our life a little bit trickier today, but we knew that, we knew what to expect, and we hope it will pay us back tomorrow. I’m very happy and I think we maximised today. Well done to Ollie Bearman, that’s a really impressive result given he didn’t know he’d be driving an F1 car today, he definitely seems to like this circuit. Best wishes to Carlos too, hopefully he’ll have a speedy recovery.”
Our race pace is typically better than our qualifying pace. We have also been quick in a straight-line so hopefully that helps us. It will be difficult, but we will be giving it everything we’ve got to progress forward tomorrow. If we can do so, that would be great.
A miss for Bearman allowed Visa Cash App RB’s Yuki Tsunoda to sneak into the Top 10 after a solid performance where he beat his teammate Daniel Ricciardo. The Australia was left frustrated for the second race in a row especially after his qualifying run.
Williams’ Alexander Albon was happy with his performance even if he did not make it into Q3 as he noted about the F1 team lacking some pace. Teammate Logan Sargeant had Q2 pace, but his out lap wasn’t good enough to materialise into a better run.
While Kevin Magnussen felt good with his run, Haas teammate Nico Hulkenberg noted about fuel system issue which halted his run in Q2. Also, Stake F1 Team’s Zhou Guanyu was left a bit down after missing out on qualifying as he was looking good.
Although the team managed to repair the car, there was no time left for Guanyu to set a time. Both the Alpine F1 driver were left disappointed with another Q1 exit, but Esteban Ocon hopes to find something with the straightline speed.
Tsunoda: “We did it! I’m very happy today. The team did a fantastic job of giving me a nice car, and I enjoyed it, so a huge thanks to everyone. We were expecting it to be difficult, but I focused on myself to extract as much performance from the car as possible, and I’m pleased I was able to put it all together. It’s the first Q3 of the year and it’s given us extra confidence for the future. I enjoyed today a lot, but tomorrow won’t be easy, so we now focus on the race. We have a lot of experienced people, and I’m confident we can maximise our package and score some points.”
Albon: “I’m mostly happy with P12 but I know we’re still missing Q3 by a few tenths, so we’re a little further from where we want to be but it’s good progress. We have good race pace and I think we’ll be able to manage the tyres reasonably well tomorrow. Whilst we struggled a little bit today, our race pace looks to be slightly better than some of our competitors, so we’ll see what we can do with it tomorrow.”
Guanyu: “First and foremost, the team did a fantastic job putting the car back together in such a short time, which is definitely not an easy task. The accident in Turn Six was quite some impact: it’s a flat-out corner, and I lost the rear – which cost us the qualifying and a chance to show what we can do due to the time we needed to repair the car. Until then, the weekend, in general, had felt good, and I can feel the team has made a step forward. Unfortunately, we’ll start from the back at a track with not much tyre degradation, definitely not a position we wanted to be in. Nevertheless, I am happy that the team managed to get me out there to get a feel for the car ahead of the race. Tomorrow will be difficult, but our race pace has been looking decent so far, and we’ll stay positive.”
Hulkenberg: “The power cut, and on the radio the team said it was related to the fuel system – fuel not being delivered to the engine – which is obviously a problem and they asked me to stop. Yesterday’s running was okay, not great, but we did some decent set-up work overnight, but we can’t really test that until tomorrow obviously. I think it will be challenging either way, especially from where we start with traffic and running with the pack. It’s going to be an interesting day for us to see how the package performs here on a very different circuit to Bahrain.”
Ocon: “It’s been a difficult Qualifying for us here in Jeddah, where we still lack some performance. I would say I maximised the session and unfortunately that was only enough for Q1. We will keep pushing, keep our heads high and keep digging to unlock more pace from the car. We will fight in the race – as we always do – and try to have a good start tomorrow. Our straight line speed has been reasonably competitive this weekend, so we will see how we can race relative to others. Gathering data and learning more about the car is also a must for us.”
Here’s how F1 Saudi Arabian GP qualifying panned out
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