One week on from delivering a cold, hard dose of reality to Red Bull’s rivals in Bahrain, Max Verstappengenerously decided to give someone else a turn at the top of the times during the opening day of running in Jeddah.
The world champion and early championship leader was three tenths of a second slower than Fernando Alonso during the low-fuel runs in the middle of the second practice session, allowing Formula 1 and its many international broadcast partners to feign that the rest of this weekend will not be as straightforward for Red Bull as Bahrain turned out to be.
But immediately after the session ended, Verstappen had the demeanour of a driver who knew he has every reason to feel confident about his chances over the rest of the weekend.
“I think it’s been pretty good overall,” he said. “There’s always things that you look at to do better over one lap performance, but also I think some teams already used a little bit more power like they did in Bahrain.”
Considering that when Verstappen began his best lap of the day he crossed the timing line 5kph slower than an Aston Martin he was 7kph faster than last weekend at the end of the main straight in qualifying, it’s easy to see why the Red Bull driver is confident. Even more so considering the one team who made the smallest improvement over their 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix performance on Friday was Red Bull. All signs they have plenty more in hand.
After last week’s opening round of the season around an abrasive, extremely rear-limited Bahrain circuit, teams and drivers alike were eager to point out how the high-speed, flowing Jeddah track would be a whole different challenge which could produce different results. However, taking Thursday at face value, it’s striking that the nine of the ten cars who scored points last weekend were in the top half of the field in second practice in Jeddah. Only Lando Norris was missing, his slot claimed by Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, who must be hoping that is a sign of better things to come.
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The field spread of 1.326s from Alonso’s best lap to Valtteri Bottas in 20th was closer than it was in Q1 here last year – only further proof of how close the grid is this early phase of the season. While the current top five teams should all expect to get through into Q3 with both cars on Friday, it shows that any mistake when it matters most could be…
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