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33/50 Leclerc is not happy with his car. It’s not just the Mercs trailing in the wake of Red Bull.
32/50 Albon, to his credit, stayed out of trouble, and there was no need for a safety car.
31/50 Verstappen and Hamilton in similar positions, chasing down their slower cars, and second driver. In between is an Alonso sandwich. Ferrari are behind them. The Red Bulls are lapping at one second a lap faster.
30/50 Verstappen one place off achieving the very possible.
29/50 Perez has the whip hand and is driving his way to victory if he can keep his teammate at bay. It may all come down to safety cars and pits.
28/50 Russell is told to let Hamilton in but then tells his team Alonso has a penalty. No so, say his team but he remains ahead of Hammo for the moment. “Ah, ****,” says Russell, knowing he must drive hard. Could be frosty at Mercedes, though would that make much of a change?
27/50 Hamilton has DRS in his chase of Russell, his Mercedes teammate. They are racing, and Hamilton’s is the quicker car. Perez remains five seconds ahead.
26/50 Alex Albon calls in to his Williams team. “Oh my god, brake failure.” He still ploughs on, and misses the pits, and he slows down, in the manner of VW Polo with the choke out.
25/50 Alonso offers no resistance, and Verstappen flies up the track after Perez. Hamilton on the medium tyres looks the main threat to the top three. The gap between Perez and Verstappen is 5.5 seconds or thereabouts. The defending champion is setting fastest laps.
24/50 Verstappen has overtaken Russell and now he’s after Alonso. A Red Bull 1/2 is soon to happen.
23/50 Verstappen is flying after Russell, and it may not be long that the Englishman’s resistance holds up. Perez up front is way ahead of Alonso.
22/50 Hamilton is up to fifth, enjoying the extra grip of his tyres and flying past Sainz.
21/50 The safety card goes off, and Perez leads out the field, and this time he burns off Alonso. Verstappen has the fastest lap now, and Hamilton is the only drover on medium tyres.
20/50 Stroll pulling up did a solid for his colleague Fernando Alonso in the Aston. That was surely inadvertent, as Stroll’s car was smoking in the formation lap. Another celeb spot: Patrice Evra, these days not as famous as Will Smith.
19/50 Alonso pits, takes his penalty and stays ahead of Russell for second. Now, can he try and win the race? That relies, probably, on Verstappen suffering misfortune.
18/50 Safety car deployed as Stroll draws to a halt, he had started dropping back. The fire extinguishers are on his brakes as a few cars pile to the pits.
17/50 Leclerc pits and so Verstappen is in fourth but still to pit. Leclerc comes out in eighth and Aston Martin’s decision to pit Stroll, formerly in fourth, hasn’t worked out. He’s dropping back….and there’s a yellow flag.
16/50 Sainz pits, and that puts Verstappen into fifth, behind Leclerc. Sainz comes in at ninth, with Stroll behind him in 10th. Good double-bluff pitting from the Ferrari team.
15/50 George Russell remains the mystery man, ticking along in third. Hamilton is in eighth, setting his fastest lap but still way off Perez’s’s time.
14/50 Sainz, in fifth, and behind Stroll since the start, is asked to come in. Stroll pits and then Verstappen is in sixth behind both Ferraris, Sainz ahead of Leclerc.
13/50 Leclerc, up to seventh, and with Verstappen chasing him, goes past Ocon and into sixth. “The tyres feel good, we’re going to keep going,” says Alonso.
12/50 Yes, that was very easy for Verstappen to breeze past Hamilton and into eighth. Red Bull have wings. Hamilton didn’t even get chance to try out his defensive chops.
11/50 At the start of this lap, it’s 17 seconds between Perez and Verstappen. Perez has open road ahead of him, and is blasting away. Verstappen goes after Hamilton though this won’t be the bloody battle of old. Or will it?
10/50 Perez sets a fastest lap, Alonso isn’t much slower. And Verstappen in ninth has Hamilton, in eighth, in his sights. And is giving chase.
9/50 Hamilton is passed, and passed easily by Leclerc. That battle is being saved for later, if at all. Hammo also unhappy with his tyres. Mind, he’s always complaining about his tyres.
8/50 Plan A for Alonso is the chat with the Aston garage, and that’s a one-stop blast along. Lewis Hamilton has been given a black flag warning for weaving. Oh dear.
7/50 Now Leclerc is after Hamilton after overtaking Gasly with some ease, and the Ferrari continues to fly up to the Mercedes.
1. Perez
2.Alonso + 0.858
3. Russell +3.758
4. Stroll +1.053
5. Sainz +0.867
6/50 Perez looks to open up his lead on Alonso, who is probably trying to keep a gap on Russell, so that his five seconds can be used up. Gasly is giving chase to Hamilton in a race for seventh.
5/50 Leclerc, also on the softs, is making most hay in the field in his flying Ferrari. He’s in ninth. Russell, by the way, is third, and Verstappen has progressed to 11th. Leclerc, Gasly and Hamilton, in seventh, is the midfield battle to look out for.
4/50 Perez takes the lead back from Alonso, his car having far more pace than the Aston. The plan is to set this up for Verstappen to join him.
3/50 Alonso says “copy” as he is told. He will plough on while he can. Verstappen is only up to 13th so far. This must be him being careful.
Alonso given a five-second penalty
2/50 Perez and Alonso going at each other. Piastri’s wing was damaged, and that’s a blow to the season debutant. Alonso has been given a penalty, five seconds, for that incorrect position. Leclerc has gained three positions and is up to ninth. Alonso leads ta race for the first time since 2012.
And away we go....
1/50 Alonso grabs the lead from Perez, and there’s been a prang in the field. Verstappen locked in midfield. Alonso has been noted for incorrect starting position. “I’ve got damage,” says Piastri in the McLaren.
Off they go for the formation lap, the word is that Verstappen is on soft tyres, a risky strategy as Pirelli suggest Jeddah is a one-stop tyre-change track. The logic being, presumably, to rag it from the very start. Perez blams away, warming up his tyres.
Those grid positions once more:
1) Sergio Perez (Red Bull)
2) Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin)
3) George Russell (Mercedes)
4) Carlos Sainz (Ferrari)
5) Lance Stroll (Aston Martin)
6) Esteban Ocon (Alpine)
7) Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
8) Oscar Piastri (McLaren)
9) Pierre Gasly (Alpine)
10) Nico Hulkenberg (Haas)
11) Zhou Guanyu (Alfa)
12) Charles Leclerc (Ferrari)
13) Kevin Magnussen (Haas)
14) Valtteri Bottas (Alfa)
15) Max Verstappen (Red Bull
16) Yuki Tsunoda (Alpha-Tauri)
17) Alex Albon (Williams)
18) Nyck de Vries (Alpha-Tauri)
19) Lando Norris (McLaren)
20) Logan Sargeant (Williams)
Will Smith is loving the light show. So far, he seems to be the only major celeb on show in Jeddah. How did they land him…?…ah.
Max Verstappen: “We have a quick car but I need to be careful. I know it’s not entirely realistic to fight for the win. We need to stay out of the trouble Lap 25 [for P2]? I’ll try to do better.”
The Saudi Arabian anthem rings out, short but sweet, and the race is not far away now.
Lance Stroll: “A lot of adrenaline out here. The wind picked up and that could affect the balance.
“I’m feeling good,” says Lando Norris. “We’re going to focus on the Astons and Ferrari,” says George Russell, with a wide smile.
It’s high-end chat at this point.
Fred Vasseur jokes with Brundle about being boss of Ferrari. “No pressure,” he rigoles. “To come back in the top five is the target for Charles and to put Carlos on the podium.”
Will Smith is on the grid. “Team Lewis, that’s my guy. Out late last night, I lost my voice,” chuckles the one-time Fresh Prince.
The grid is filling up, and Christian Horner suggests Verstappen’s problem was something to do with brake fluid. “If Max gets on the podium, it would be a hell of a drive,” he tells Martin Brundle on his pit walk.
Lewis Hamilton speaks ahead of the race. Despite on-track and off-field issues, he is keeping it zen.
It’s a beautiful day and I am looking forward to the race. It’s a new day, a new opportunity to do better and to have fun. We are just so privileged to do what we do. I am just going to try and enjoy today.
I am naturally going to try and press forward and gain as many points as I can for the team. A couple of guys from Aston are around me.
On Verstappen’s chance of winning, last year at Spa he went from 14th on the grid to winning, and the Belgian GP is the only track longer than Jeddah, so file under: it’s possible, bordering on the inevitable.
It’s also worth mentioning that F1 travelling to Saudi Arabia, just as with the kingdom’s interests in soccer, carries with it all the asterisks of sportswashing, human rights and geopolitical soft power.
Mustafa al-Khayyat was one of the 81 men. On Thursday his brother Yasser al-Khayyat wrote to the F1 chief executive, Stefano Domenicali, asserting that he had been executed for nothing more than taking part in pro-democracy protests and argued that F1’s presence in the Kingdom had emboldened the authorities to act brutally and without compunction.
“They use the spectacle of this sporting championship to distract from the murder of my brother and hundreds of others,” he wrote. “The grand prix carrying on as normal, without even mentioning the atrocities that have just been committed on that same soil, legitimises these heinous crimes.
“Silence is complicity. It is how the regime gets away with its atrocities and suppresses calls for democratic reforms. If you truly want Formula One to be an agent for change, rather than a tool to ‘sportswash’ Saudi abuses, please end Formula One’s silence.”
Alonso, second on the grid, is another plotline to follow. The man just lives to race.
If a Verstappen title is a fait accompli, then Lewis Hamilton’s search for an eighth world title and where that may take him will be a leading timeline of this season.
“If Lewis wants to win another championship he needs to make sure he has the car,” said Wolff. “And if we cannot demonstrate that we are able to give him a car in the next couple of years then he will need to look everywhere. I don’t think he is doing it at this stage, but I will have no complaints if that happens in a year or two.”
Red Bull could have a vacancy at the end of the year with Sergio Pérez operating on a 12-month deal, but it seems improbable that Hamilton would be paired alongside Verstappen. Ferrari is a possible avenue to explore if Charles Leclerc elects to engineer a move away.
Hamilton at Ferrari has to happen, doesn’t it?
Here’s a recap of Saturday’s rather chaotic qualifying.
Pérez’s time of 1min 28.265sec proved enough to claim only the second pole of his career, having taken the top spot here in 2022. Leclerc did improve to take second and was only a tenth and a half back, showing some of the form Ferrari had hoped to demonstrate in Jeddah. However Leclerc has a 10-place grid penalty for taking his third electronic control unit of the season with only one race under his belt. Alonso continued a very successful opening to the season with third, only four tenths in arrears. Leclerc’s Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz was in fifth.
For Mercedes’s George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, in fourth and eighth respectively, this was very much what the team had been expecting. Mercedes admitted after Bahrain that they had pursued the wrong design concept and have set about taking a new direction. Qualifying at Jeddah, certainly for Russell, was perhaps better than they had anticipated but he was still six-tenths off pole with Hamilton almost a second back, a stark confirmation of how far they have to go.
Preamble
You wanted excitement from this F1 season, and now you got it, with the news that Sergio Perez is on pole and Max Verstappen is way back in 15th. Fire up the Yello, “The Race” is on. Meanwhile, Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso will line up second because Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc has a 10-place grid penalty for engine usage. So, two of the main protagonists will be in midfield for much of the race. George Russell, in the Merc in third, while Lewis Hamilton grumps back in seventh. Jeddah has been a long, unforgiving track on the cars in its two previous editions, though turns 22 and 23 have been tightened and the walls moved back at several corners, due to safety concerns relating to fast, blind corners. This one is being run at night-time, as well.
Grid postions
1) Sergio Perez (Red Bull)
2) Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin)
3) George Russell (Mercedes)
4) Carlos Sainz (Ferrari)
5) Lance Stroll (Aston Martin)
6) Esteban Ocon (Alpine)
7) Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
8) Oscar Piastri (McLaren)
9) Pierre Gasly (Alpine)
10) Nico Hulkenberg (Haas)
11) Zhou Guanyu (Alfa)
12) Charles Leclerc (Ferrari)
13) Kevin Magnussen (Haas)
14) Valtteri Bottas (Alfa)
15) Max Verstappen (Red Bull
16) Yuki Tsunoda (Alpha-Tauri)
17) Alex Albon (Williams)
18) Nyck de Vries (Alpha-Tauri)
19) Lando Norris (McLaren)
20) Logan Sargeant (Williams)
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