Race 2 Saudi Arabia's Jeddah Corniche circuit, the 2nd fastest track on the F1 Calendar, 2nd only to Monza and 1 of only 9 anti clockwise tracks F1 race at. After Bahrain we have seen that the Qualifying gap is closer than 2023 but the race pace gap to Verstappen in the Redbull is still significant. But Jeddah is a Perez track, he has taken pole here twice and has out shone team mate Verstappen since we started racing here in 2021 so can Sergio close the gap to Max here or dare i say even beat him? Lets get going with how the grid got on in the 2 Thursday Practice sessions. 27 42Practice 1- Very Windy Track Temp 42º Air Temp 27º
After the flurry of activity at the start of the session, the cars settled in to long run data collection with both the Mercedes, Redbull, Ferrari and Aston Martins running the Hard tyres and Mclaren splitting their cars data collection with Norris on the Medium and Piastri on the Hard. With 39 minutes to go and just Leclerc, Perez, Ricciardo Tsunoda and Sargeant on track the 2 Alpine cars were 7th(GAS) & 8th(OCO) looking much happier in the car here than in Bahrain last week. 32 to go Norris & Bottas were the first drivers to set a flying lap on the Soft tyres with Norris going top as Albon kissed the barrier Williams still going 3rd fastest despite touching the wall. Verstappen joined Norris on the softs and immediately went 4 tenths faster the the Mclaren. Russell was also looking very fast on his soft tyres going 0.003 faster than Max with a mega lap. Albon & Williams were holding their own in 6th after his soft tyre run with Alex telling the team there was more in the car.
Practice 2
30 minutes to go and the long running began with the cars getting down to the race pace running while traffic in turn 10 was creating some very dangerous incidents for Alonso and Russell. 20 minutes to go Alonso was top, Russell 2nd, Verstappen 3rd. Leclerc & Perez 4th & 5th. Piastri & Norris found themselves down in 10th and 11th while the long runs continued, Hamilton was 8th, Gasly was having a good session up in 9th fastest and Stroll 6th fastest in the sister Aston Martin.
Joanna Blackmore
Writer @f1journal.co.uk
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