Verstappen’s poise shows his rivals face a hard Friday night fight for pole

One week on from delivering a cold, hard dose of reality to Red Bull’s rivals in Bahrain, Max Verstappengenerously decided to give someone else a turn at the top of the times during the opening day of running in Jeddah.

The world champion and early championship leader was three tenths of a second slower than Fernando Alonso during the low-fuel runs in the middle of the second practice session, allowing Formula 1 and its many international broadcast partners to feign that the rest of this weekend will not be as straightforward for Red Bull as Bahrain turned out to be.

But immediately after the session ended, Verstappen had the demeanour of a driver who knew he has every reason to feel confident about his chances over the rest of the weekend.

“I think it’s been pretty good overall,” he said. “There’s always things that you look at to do better over one lap performance, but also I think some teams already used a little bit more power like they did in Bahrain.”

Considering that when Verstappen began his best lap of the day he crossed the timing line 5kph slower than an Aston Martin he was 7kph faster than last weekend at the end of the main straight in qualifying, it’s easy to see why the Red Bull driver is confident. Even more so considering the one team who made the smallest improvement over their 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix performance on Friday was Red Bull. All signs they have plenty more in hand.

After last week’s opening round of the season around an abrasive, extremely rear-limited Bahrain circuit, teams and drivers alike were eager to point out how the high-speed, flowing Jeddah track would be a whole different challenge which could produce different results. However, taking Thursday at face value, it’s striking that the nine of the ten cars who scored points last weekend were in the top half of the field in second practice in Jeddah. Only Lando Norris was missing, his slot claimed by Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, who must be hoping that is a sign of better things to come.

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The field spread of 1.326s from Alonso’s best lap to Valtteri Bottas in 20th was closer than it was in Q1 here last year – only further proof of how close the grid is this early phase of the season. While the current top five teams should all expect to get through into Q3 with both cars on Friday, it shows that any mistake when it matters most could be especially costly, with seven cars within half a second of tenth place by the end of second practice.

But beyond drivers hooking up their push laps, they will all need to be supremely focused even more than usual in qualifying. As Lewis Hamiltonand Mercedes showed in the opening minutes of the second session, teams must never drop their guard for a second, otherwise they will be hauled up in front of the stewards and handed a grid penalty for impeding a rival around this barrier-lined beast of a race track.

Track limits are always a concern, but the most dangerous one is, ironically, the easiest to avoid. After completing the challenge of 27 corners, throwing away a full lap time for crossing into the painted section between the track and the pit road is the most infuriating way to have all that hard work invalidated. But as has been seen with Lia Block and Maya Weug in F1 Academy qualifying, the earlier F2 qualifying session or even Logan Sargeant during last year’s F1 qualifying, a lack of concentration can see a driver undo all their efforts by straying into the forbidden zone.

Beyond the likelihood that the RB20 may be even better suited to this much faster circuit than Bahrain, it’s too close to call how the rest of the grid is likely to form up. Piastri admitted that McLaren “could be right up the front, we could be P10 – it’s just very hard to know.” A sentiment that’s likely to be shared by many of the teams.

But with such a low downforce circuit, Friday’s qualifying could take on even greater importance than the three previous sessions held at this track. After multiple drivers complained about how the dirty air effect was more prominent last weekend in Bahrain than previous years and teams running smaller wings here in Saudi Arabia, there’s every possibility that it may prove more difficult than before for drivers to stick close enough to their rivals and attempt to pass.

That makes Verstappen’s confession that “probably other people are a bit better than us over one lap” even more crucial. Because as Leclerc showed last weekend, Red Bull can be beaten in qualifying. But it’s up to Verstappen’s rivals to deliver their best laps of the weekend when it matters most, at the end of qualifying, if anyone is likely to have a chance of stopping Red Bull in Jeddah this year.

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Combined practice times

P.	#	Driver	Team	FP1 time	FP2 time	Gap	Laps
1	14	Fernando Alonso	Aston Martin-Mercedes	1’29.845	1’28.827		52
2	63	George Russell	Mercedes	1’29.939	1’29.057	0.230	47
3	1	Max Verstappen	Red Bull-Honda RBPT	1’29.659	1’29.158	0.331	51
4	16	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	1’30.030	1’29.180	0.353	49
5	11	Sergio Perez	Red Bull-Honda RBPT	1’29.868	1’29.300	0.473	50
6	18	Lance Stroll	Aston Martin-Mercedes	1’30.580	1’29.336	0.509	45
7	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Ferrari	1’30.164	1’29.455	0.628	50
8	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’30.236	1’29.504	0.677	43
9	10	Pierre Gasly	Alpine-Renault	1’31.046	1’29.528	0.701	54
10	81	Oscar Piastri	McLaren-Mercedes	1’30.977	1’29.594	0.767	49
11	22	Yuki Tsunoda	RB-Honda RBPT	1’31.036	1’29.666	0.839	53
12	4	Lando Norris	McLaren-Mercedes	1’30.231	1’29.758	0.931	49
13	24	Zhou Guanyu	Sauber-Ferrari	1’31.131	1’29.777	0.950	51
14	23	Alexander Albon	Williams-Mercedes	1’30.747	1’29.789	0.962	54
15	31	Esteban Ocon	Alpine-Renault	1’30.945	1’29.901	1.074	54
16	2	Logan Sargeant	Williams-Mercedes	1’30.966	1’29.934	1.107	54
17	20	Kevin Magnussen	Haas-Ferrari	1’31.577	1’29.985	1.158	40
18	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Haas-Ferrari	1’31.411	1’30.077	1.250	44
19	3	Daniel Ricciardo	RB-Honda RBPT	1’30.917	1’30.088	1.261	54
20	77	Valtteri Bottas	Sauber-Ferrari	1’30.783	1’30.153	1.326	53

Teams’ progress vs 2023

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2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

• Vowles being patient with Sargeant but expects to see “progress”
• “So I’ve got nothing to worry about?” – The best unheard team radio from Jeddah
• “Shock” of poor start to season showed need for change at Alpine – Famin
• “My tyres are dying”: Stroll’s short-lived struggle until he hit the wall
• Bearman calls Ferrari debut a “dream” but admits “I made a lot of mistakes”

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