2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix - Thursday

Opening day of running in Jeddah provides plenty of intrigue

• The team’s focus on Thursday was to get a read across all tyre compounds and find a good balance with the W15 for the rest of the weekend.
• In the warmer and windier conditions of FP1, George was fourth fastest and Lewis eighth quickest having run both the Hard and Soft compounds.
• To maximise the learning with the W15, both drivers experimented with set-up changes for FP2.
• In the cooler evening session George finished P2, setting his best time on his third push lap on the soft tyre; Lewis was once again P8 having been similarly affected by traffic and not being able to get his first push lap in.
• Whilst the single lap pace looked promising, the team will be focused on utilising the data from today to create a more consistent car balance.
  
  

George Russell

It was fun to be back on the track here in Jeddah. It’s a really high-speed circuit so that’s enjoyable. We didn’t have the car in the perfect window and FP2 was a little bit of a scrappy session. The times looked good on the single lap, and we’re not too sure yet where we’re at on the long runs.

We did a lot of testing in FP1 with different set-ups across the cars. We then made some changes for FP2 to try and learn more about the W15. It’s still very early days; it’s only the second race of the season and the second circuit we’ve ran at in anger. We need to keep on building on our learnings and everyone will be hard at work overnight to eke out more performance.  It’s so close once again so let’s see what we can do tomorrow.

Lewis Hamilton

It was a difficult day. I was lacking a little confidence in the rear of the car. We did some work on the set-up from session-to-session and changed the car quite a bit. The main issue I was struggling with in both FP1 and FP2 was still the rear though. I had a few big moments out there and on such a high-speed track like this, you need to have full confidence in that. I haven’t quite got that yet.

We’ll go through the data tonight to see how we can improve. George was clearly in a happier place with the car today. We went in slightly different directions so hopefully we can learn from that and find the right solutions.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We've covered quite a range of set-ups over the course of the day. Ultimately, it doesn't feel like we've ended up with either car in the best place. The single lap was messy and compromised by traffic. A cleaner session would have helped but we're also lacking a bit of grip in the high-speed. We will be looking overnight at solutions to that.

Our long runs weren't very long either, which wasn't ideal. From the limited date, we have reasonable pace but neither driver was happy with the overall balance. The summary therefore is that we've got lap-time to find overnight. The positive is that we have plenty of areas to go looking for it.