Saudi Arabian GP Practice 1 and 2 Recap

Ferrari pair Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz followed in fifth and sixth respectively, with the latter making it to the Jeddah Corniche Circuit just in time after missing Wednesday’s media duties due to illness.

Lando Norris was the fastest of the McLaren drivers in seventh position, followed by the other Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton, the Aston Martin of Lance Stroll – who survived a brush with the wall early on – and the Williams of Alex Albon.

Kick Sauber’s charge was led by Valtteri Bottas in 11th position, with team mate Zhou Guanyu back in P18 after saving a wild slide at the start of his soft-tyre run and losing a chunk of time as he backed out.

Daniel Ricciardo took 12th for RB, setting his best time on mediums, with Esteban Ocon 13th as Alpine look to make progress after their painful season-opener in Bahrain and the latest set of staff changes that saw both their Technical Director and Head of Aerodynamics move on.

Logan Sargeant and Oscar Piastri were a chunk away from their Williams and McLaren team mates in P14 and P15 respectively, with Yuki Tsunoda 16th in the other RB as he also used the yellow-marked medium tires for his best lap.

P17 went to Pierre Gasly in the second of the Alpine machines, from the aforementioned Zhou and Haas pair Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen who, like the RB drivers, logged their fastest times on mediums.

“The practice sessions today have been pretty good overall,” said Verstappen post practice. “The pace has been good on both the long and short runs and they have prepared the track well for a street circuit. Overall, we learnt a lot and there are always things you look to do better on a one lap performance. We know some other teams have a bit more power on the one lap so we’ll look into the data to try and improve our overall performance and extract as much as we can from this. Looking to qualifying I am feeling good; it will be tight but we are happy with our performance today and looking forward to tomorrow.”

Elsewhere, the stewards confirmed that they will investigate a potential impeding incident between Lewis Hamilton and Logan Sargeant after the session, with the Williams having to take avoiding action after encountering the slow-moving Mercedes.

As the qualifying runs on the soft tyre came in, it was Alonso who set the pace on a 1m 28.827s. This time remained on top as drivers switched to long runs during the latter half of the session, with the Spaniard’s lap putting him 0.230s ahead of Russell.