PACE DEBRIEF: Where do McLaren gain over their rivals?
McLaren headed the field come the end of the first day of practice for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, but Red Bull's Max Verstappen looks much more comfortable in his RB21 than a week ago in Bahrain. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo delivers his latest pace analysis from Jeddah.
The opening day of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix saw McLaren head the field, with Lando Norris pipping his team-mate Oscar Piastri.
At the track that runs alongside the Jeddah Corniche, the pair of papaya team drivers set the fastest times, obviously in FP2, the evening session run in identical conditions to those the drivers will face on Saturday and Sunday in qualifying and the race, making it the more representative of the two. Lando Norris was quickest with a 1’28”267, while Oscar Piastri was second in 1’28”430.
Having struggled for pace at last Sunday's Bahrain grand Prix, reigning champion Max Verstappen looked much more competitive in his RB21, ending up only a tenth behind Piastri.
Ferrari's Charles Leclerc set the benchmark on Pirelli's mediums, but he struggled to extract everything from the soft tyres, and ended up fourth fastest.
Friday's best time was just over half a second quicker than that from last year’s second session, when Fernando Alonso lapped in 1’28”827, when temperatures were actually a little cooler, with the 2024 event taking place in March. It was also set on a harder compound – C4 as opposed to C5 – as this year, Pirelli has brought a trio of dry weather tyres that are one step softer.
Comparing Norris', Verstappen's and Leclerc's best times in FP2, there are clear trends to observe regarding the weaknesses and strengths of cars. Down the main straight, Verstappen and Norris were stronger than Leclerc, which suggested that they used a different ERS deployment setup compared to the Monegasque.
While Verstappen was quickest through the slow-speed opening corners and the medium-speed, long-radius Turn 5, Leclerc was the fastest down the full-throttle section between Turns 3 and 4 and the high-speed Turns 7 and 8.
Norris was still the quickest through the opening session of the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, going a tenth faster than Verstappen and almost four tenths quicker than Leclerc in what turned out to be a McLaren-dominated section of the 6.2km track.
The beginning of Sector 2 saw Norris gain a lot over his rivals, demonstrating his MCL39's superiority through the high-speed Turns 13-18, with the Briton's car generating much more downforce through the high-speed corners.
The subsequent full-throttle section saw Verstappen come out as quickest while Leclerc was the fastest from Turn 21. Norris was fastest in the middle part of the track as well, with Verstappen and Leclerc having been 0.131s and 0.164s behind.
A similar picture emerged in Sector 3 where the Dutchman was quickest through the opening part of the long full-throttle section before Leclerc ended this section as fastest due to the impressive top speed of his SF25. The challenging Turn 27 saw Norris enjoy the best balance to surpass Leclerc's and Verstappen's performance in the last corner.
Oscar Piastri recorded the best time in Sector 3, with Norris 5 thousands of a second behind. Leclerc was only 0.061s down while Verstappen was a further tenth behind.
