In the top ten positions on the starting grid only Lando Norris will start with soft tires. The rest of the group managed in yesterday’s qualifying to pass the Q2 cut using medium tires (taking advantage of a very small performance gap between the two compounds) and thus laying the foundations for a race with only one stop.
On paper, the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in terms of strategies seems to be the race with the fewest unknowns of the year: starting with the averages, and passing to the hard ones from lap 19 to 25, while those who start with the soft ones should stop with 3 laps early.
All very simple, but there is a variable that is partly feared (by those who shoot in the first positions) and hoped for by those who shoot in the rear: the safety car. Even ‘virtual’ will be among the strategists’ nightmares, and for this reason the drivers will try to delay the pit stop as much as possible.
In the last Brazilian Grand Prix, extending the first stint, Valtteri Bottas managed to outwit Sergio Perez, stealing from him the third position thanks to the tire change that took place under the VSC regime. The partial freezing of the race involves the loss of half of the ordinary stop time, in Jeddah calculated in 22 seconds.
Obviously the first very high voltage phase will be the start. In the last Mexican Grand Prix, Verstappen at the start had managed to slip the Mercedes couple in the front row, taking the lead at the first corner, but in Jeddah the scenario is very different. In Arabia, however, the width of the carriageway is much smaller, and the distance that separates the start line from the braking at Turn 1 is also much shorter, 220 meters compared to 820 in Mexico City.
Few variables also on the availability of tires. Everyone has a new set of hard at their disposal (with the exception of the two Aston Martins), and even on the ‘medium’ front they have a new set of Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren and Alpine at their disposal. For Ferrari and AlphaTauri the availability of ‘yellow’ tires is two sets, used for a few laps yesterday in Q2.
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