Full Field Race Pace Excluding pit in pit out and Safety Car
The Race this past weekend was not very exciting. Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was first held in 2021. It is the fastest street circuit track with an average speed of 250km/h. It holds the most turns out of any trick having 27 turns. Many of those turns are not turns in formula one car. Last year we saw a great battle between Charles and Max which saw Max win. This year though was not as exciting as last year. Everyone ran a pretty similar strangely all of them expecting some kind of safety car to pick up a cheap pit stop and that is what happened. Let’s start off by discussing Red Bull and their dominance.
This was Red Bull’s race to lose, to be honest, this is Red Bull’s season to lose, but they defiantly did not lose this weekend fishing with Perez finishing 1 and Max finishing 2. Max had one new set of hards 2 mediums and 2 softs to use during the race and Perez had 1 hard 2 mediums and 3 sets of used softs. Both Perez and Max Started on new sets of mediums. Perez got an okay start of the line but did end up losing the lead to Alonso on turn 13 but by lap 4 Perez was back into first. The rest was history Max worked his way up from 15th place to finish second about 5 seconds of Perez well also securing the fastest lap of the race to keep him one point in the lead of the championship. Red Bull has so much pace and outside the concert of Max’s engine problem which he complained about a couple of times during the weekend, they look to by far the best team out there with everyone just fighting for second.
Mercedes after finishing 5th and 7th in Bahrain finished 4th and 5th. Only behind Red Bull and Alonso, there was a chance of George finishing third with Alonso’s penalty but that did not happen. Going into the race George had 1 set of hards 2 sets of mediums and 3 sets of used softs. Lewis had 1 set of hards 2 sets of mediums and 3 sets of used softs. Overall it was a good race for Mercedes they finished as high as they really could have Mercedes has been very critical of their car after the first race and we expect to see them bring a new car out here in the next couple of races. Their zero-side pod concept has really struggled for them. In this race they did well lewis did struggle on the hards at the start of the race and you can see that with some of his lap times. Russel started on the mediums and seem to do fine setting faster laps times the lewis for most of the first stint granted on mediums. They both pitted under the safety car Lewis went onto the mediums and George went onto the hards. George seemed to have no problems getting those hards into a good time Overall it was good to race beating out their completion in Ferrari they did lose out to the only Aston Martin that finished the race.
Alpine had a solid weekend coming in 8th place and 9th place which is improvement for Estabon who DNF last weekend. Going into the race Pierre had 2 sets of new hards 1 set of new mediums and 3 pairs of used softs. Estabon had 2 sets of new hards 1 set of new mediums and 3 pairs of used softs. Just like most teams they where on a one stop strategy. It looks like on the first stint the cars struggled a little with those mediums. You can see the laps where pretty consistin but they did have some outliers. They pitted Pierre stoped on lap 14 to go onto hards and Esteban pitted on lap 16. Both of them missed out on pitting under the safety car. Their second stint would be much better then there first stint their lap times where consistently coming down throughout the second stint. Those hard tires where doing a much better job for them then the mediums where doing. Overall it was good race for alpine after a tough start in the last race with a DNF.
