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WHAT WE'VE
LEARNED
* Max Verstappen was the quickest driver of the day. The Red Bull driver set
a best time of 1m29.603s using the P Zero Red soft C4. Behind him, Aston
Martin’s Fernando Alonso stopped the clocks on a 1m29.811s, with Red Bull’s
Sergio Perez 0.91s behind him. It was a closely-fought FP2 session, with all
the drivers covered by less than a second a half.
* The second free practice session was more representative of qualifying and
the race than the earlier session, with a track temperature of 32°C and air
temperature of 26°C. This was considerably different to FP1, when track
temperatures reached nearly 40°C. There was more wind in the second session,
with gusts up to 24.8kph.
* A high degree of track evolution was noted throughout both sessions. Grip
from the tyres increased as evening fell, helped also by running from the
various support championships.
* Red Bull and Aston Martin also set the best times in FP1. Verstappen did a
1m29.617s on a set of used soft tyres, 0.483s ahead of Perez. Alonso and
Lance Stroll were third and fourth quickest, setting a 1m30.315s and
1m30.577s respectively.
* The fastest driver on the P Zero White hard C2 was AlphaTauri’s Nyck De
Vries, who set a 1m31.579s, while Verstappen did the best time for the P
Zero Yellow medium C3: 1m29.952s. De Vries and his team mate Yuki Tsunoda
completed a total of 21 laps on the soft tyre.
MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF CAR RACING
“It was quite an interesting day, especially in the second free practice
session. As expected, FP1 wasn’t particularly representative in terms of
tyre behaviour, characterised by notably high track evolution. On a track
that was completely different to the opening round in Sakhir, the teams
concentrated on car setup for the most part. The FP2 session was much more
relevant, with nearly all the drivers focussing on the medium and the soft
tyres. The main theme for tyres last year was managing front degradation,
which was mainly down to degradation. The first analysis of the long runs
indicates that this year’s new construction that was designed to reduce
understeer, along with the better overall balance of the 2023 cars, has
practically eliminated graining on the hard and medium. There’s still some
graining on the soft – especially on the front-right tyre – but this doesn’t
significantly influence performance over long runs. The constantly evolving
track conditions and improvements to the setup that teams will make in FP3
suggest that a one-stop strategy using medium and soft is most likely for
the race, also because there’s a relatively small performance gap of 0.4
seconds between these two compounds, which makes both valid options for the
race.”
NUMBER OF THE
DAY: 27
Jeddah is the circuit with the highest number of corners in Formula 1: 27 in
total throughout the 6.174-kilometre lap, made up of 16 left-handers and 11
right-handers. The forces exceed 4.5g in Turns 8 and 9, which are among the
most demanding on the tyres within the opening sector. In this part of the
track, from the entry to the first corner after the straight right up to
Turn 12, the drivers are constantly changing direction for almost 25
seconds. The fastest corners are instead Turns 21 and 26, taken at a peak
speed of 320kph. |
