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Oh mannnnn,
the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend was a LOT wasn’t it. Far too much happening off track than
any of us really needed and the constant looming threat of someone doing themselves
a terrible injury on this unnecessarily dangerous track but… we’ll get to all that.
On the positive side of things, the actual race was a good one.
Exciting and interesting in both on track action and strategic plays.
And let’s start off with a continuation from what we suspected after Bahrain: you can follow.
Granted, we’re only two tracks deep into this season and still need to gather data
before celebrating too hard [video footage of that thing] but here we are at a very
different track to Bahrain and seeing cars able to follow closely right through the lap.
Multiple drivers affirmed after the race how much easier it was to stay
with the car in front, without losing grip, without overheating the tyres.
The battle between Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso went on for lap after lap after lap, and
while the main overtaking spot remained down the DRS zone the reason they were able to keep
resuming their fight was from their ability to follow each other through the 27 corners
on this fast, windy sort-of street track. This wasn’t seasons gone by where you have
a crack at an overtake, then have to back off and cool the car or where keeping your
nose in touch with the car ahead wrecks your grip enough to drop you back and out of DRS zone. No,
these cars were keeping together and able to launch attacks over and over. That’s great. Let’s
hope this continues at the rest of the tracks. The Leclerc/Verstappen battle was brilliant
once again, but - as in Bahrain - we saw the drivers fighting over who got granted DRS.
Leclerc told us after Bahrain that, in his scrap with Verstappen, he let Verstappen
win the position into turn one in order to grab DRS for the run down to turn 4 to retake the lead.
It was a bold choice, honestly - ceding the lead like that gives you no guarantee of getting it
back, but Leclerc made it work rather brilliantly. Here in Jeddah, the DRS run to the final corner,
turn 27 led on to the long main straight with another powerful DRS zone.
With the DRS in the final sector and the ability of these cars to stay close,
Verstappen was finding himself able to make a move on Leclerc into the final corner.
But this meant Leclerc could grab DRS power, stay close and easily grab the lead back down the pit
straight. Same flavour as Bahrain, really. Now Max is no fool, he’s not going to keep
letting that happen. So what we ended up with is what got called ‘DRS Chicken’ with
both drivers playing silly buggers and locking brakes, each trying to be just behind the other
as they crossed the DRS detection line. It was fascinating stuff, and perhaps
a little silly, but seeing the drivers get clever and tactical on the fly was super exciting.
Eventually Verstappen did get past Leclerc just by being able to follow him through 27,
pick up the DRS and use it down the main straight. From there he had superior pace
to hang on to the lead til the end. Just. But let’s talk DRS then. Clearly these cars
can follow more closely. And clearly DRS is so powerful that drivers are willing to
give up track position for it. So is this a sign we’re now at
the point where we can start thinking about removing DRS entirely - something
a lot of people have been crying out for? Well, the drivers aren’t entirely convinced
yet. Both Verstappen and Leclerc saying that it was still needed to ensure that cars
were actually able to pass and stay close. Max said “If I didn't have DRS today I would
have never passed,” and that the cars are still too sensitive. Charles, similarly saying “As much
as following has been better from last year to this year, and it's a very positive step, I still
think it's not enough to get rid of the DRS.” But I think what F1 can start doing
and experimenting with, is reducing the power of the DRS.
We often go to tracks with multiple DRS zones. Do we need all of them?
Well in some cases they do actually work quite well together. In Bahrain and Jeddah we had
one DRS zone leading onto another giving us this great pass-repass, cat and mouse,
back and forth action. It allows drivers to fight back so a DRS pass isn’t one and done.
But they also have a third DRS zone? How important is this? Would the cars drift apart without it?
This is something we can play with to work out at different tracks.
And what about the length of the DRS zones? Can we start reducing them down a bit so they still
allow drivers to ‘finish off’ the move but not be so potent that drivers are squabbling with each
other to be last into the detection zone. And we can keep dialling DRS in as
we go and learn more about these cars. Tyre wise - I think they got it just right here.
The compound choices were pretty perfect. The softs were fast for qualifying pace, the mediums
were quick but had a short lifespan and needed looking after a bit, and the hards could be pushed
and maintained their pace over long runs and kept their potency even running in dirty air.
We saw Verstappen’s race come alive in the second half as he was able to push on the hard tyres in
ways he couldn’t on the medium, leading to his all out attack on Leclerc in the closing stages.
And Hamilton, who started on hards and opted not to stop during the safety car,
was able to attack and keep pace on his old hards against cars on newer mediums. There was great
balance and strategic skill in these compounds. And then we come to the track. Look, I’m sure
there can be improvements made to this track but right now it’s still too fast running too close to
barriers that aren’t designed to take big impacts. Two drivers ended up in hospital and
I honestly spend a lot of the weekend praying to Giacomelli that we don’t get a very nasty
accident with cars crashing across the track and being t-boned at 200 kilometres an hour.
Motorsport is dangerous and there should be fast tracks that test a driver’s skill and bravery but
I think the risk of concussion and broken limbs needs to be dialled down a touch. On top of that,
recovery teams and vehicles were taking way too long to get to accidents. In the event of
anything more sinister, we need to know drivers are going to be extracted or dealt with quickly.
Some people think it’s nonsense to be so safety focussed but I think we’ve seen enough brushes
with and losses to death than we should be happy with in motorsport recently so
no need to flirt with the devil any more than necessarily. It baffles me that they could
have built any track anywhere and they squeeze this high speed death trap onto a Saudi beach.
And finally, I’m no geopolitical expert and there’s a longer discussion to be had about
which countries should be hosting races and why and whether F1 should even be
having an opinion on “political issues”. It’s complicated. And yes, it does seem to be easier
to criticise middle eastern countries, in a kind of white imperialistic condescension
than looking in our own back yard. I mean Britain has a whole load of yikes of it’s own, and we’re
gonna have three races in America: One in Texas with outrageous anti trans and anti abortion law,
one in Florida where the hideous ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law is being pushed through and one in
Las Vegas where… well, I don’t know about Vegas. Everyone who goes there won’t talk about it.
But the wider point it: drivers shouldn’t have to be put in a position where they’re taking
it upon themselves to work out if racing within eyeball distance of missile strikes
is something they should be doing. It was extraordinarily uncomfortable to
watch everything unfold on Friday and I think F1 handled it incredibly badly.
I hope they stay good to their word in reviewing situations like this
and dragging drivers and teams into geopolitical situations like this. Russia was taken off the
calendar. The Yemeni war remains one of the worst ongoing humanitarian crises on the planet.
It seems extraordinary for F1 to just… insert itself into the middle of it, no?
Anyway. Australia next. I’m sure they don’t do anything awful.