Practice 1 Report - Verstappen fastest

Max Verstappen, Bahrain GP 2024
© Red Bull

Max Verstappen continued his domination, setting the fastest time in FP1 for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix with a time of 1m29.659.

The Dutchman leading Fernando Alonso by 0.186s, with team mate Sérgio Pérez in third place, just over 0.2s slower than the World Champion.

On a relatively hot track, with tarmac temperature above 41º Celsius, the teams worked more on the basic set-up of their cars than anything else, trying to antecipate how the tyres will work in the evening, as FP2, qualifying and the race will be held after the sunset, when temperatures tend to drop by quite a bit and the already strong winds felt in this inaugural session tend to pick up even more.

On a front limited track, that doesn't play into his strenghts, Verstappen quickly found a set-up he could live with, pushing hard right from the word go, but it was only when he put on Soft tyres his Red Bull RB20 jumped to the top of the time sheets.

Up until then it had been Russell setting the pace, with Pérez right behind him, as Mercedes is starting to confirm the new W15 is quite competitive in all sorts of tracks and conditions – quite a relief after two very difficult years for the Mercedes team.

While Russell still finished the session in fourth place, in spite of not putting the lap together on the Soft tyres, Hamilton complained a lot of rear bouncing on his car and was only 8th quickest, almost 0.8s behind Verstappen, so the seven-times World Champion has work to do to get in the fight later today.

Alonso's P2 seemed to be a bit misleading, the Spaniard only swapping for the Soft tyres and doing a low fuel run in the last ten minutes of the session, when temperatures were already going down, but the AMR24 seemed quite well planted in the high speed corners, but a bit nervous in the many Esses of this track.

Lance Stroll nearly compromised his entire weekend as he touched the inside wall on Turn 21 on his second flying lap, being very lucky to get away with just a damaged left front wheel, as he was really close to losing control and going across the track into the outside wall at very high speed. It took a few minutes for the Aston Martin mechanics to be able to remove the wheel and check for further damaged in the brake drums, suspension and floor, the Canadian losing one run compared to all his rivals but ending the session in P9, a good six tenths of a second behind his team mate.

Ferrari had a relatively slow start, Carlos Sainz arriving as late as possible at the track as the team wanted him to rest as much as he could, as he recovers from a minor health issue that kept him in bed on Wednesday.

With the rear of the SF-24 looking a bit too lively coming out of the slower corners of the track, Leclerc and Sainz were fighting snap oversteer on a couple of occasions, the Monegasque ending the session in P5, 0.371s behind Verstappen and just ahead of his team mate.

Lando Norris, who was the only driver from the top teams who used one set of Medium compound tyres early on, so he was among the leaders in that first part of the session. On the Soft tyre, the MCL38 looked to have similar pace to the one shown in Bahrain, the British driver setting the 7th quickest time of the session. Team mate Oscar Piastri was on course for an excelent lap time on the Hard tyre when he made a mistake on the last sector, the Australian also failing to put the lap together on the softer tyre and ending up down in P15 as a consequence.

That allowed Alex Albon to put his Williams inside the top ten, beating his direct competition – in this case Valtteri Bottas – by just 0.036s.

As for the others, it has to be noted that Racing Bulls and Haas were the only teams that didn't use any Soft tyres in this session, Ricciardo, Tsunoda and Magnussen running with a set of Hards and then a set of Mediums, while Nico Hulkenberg used two sets of Medium compound tyres, so it was not a surprise the American team was last in the standings, but Ricciardo's P12 was an encouraging result for Racing Bulls, as he was just 0.377s away from Stroll's 9th quickest time on a harder tyre.

Tsunoda, who was faster than his team mate throughout the session, didn't put together the final lap on low fuel, dropping to P16 but just 0.119s behind the Australian.