F1 Saudi Arabian GP Live Commentary and Updates - FP1 & FP2
Thursday's action from the second round of the 2024 Formula 1 season.
Max Verstappen dominated the F1 season opener in Bahrain last week in a Red Bull 1-2, but can the world champions follow it up at a very different track in Saudi Arabia?
Focus remains on Red Bull for off-track ongoings too, following Jos Verstappen’s calls for team principal Christian Horner to step down.
First practice begins at 1:30pm GMT (4:30pm local time) followed by second practice at 5pm GMT (8pm local time).
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Meanwhile Perez improves to fifth, moving to within four tenths of the pace. Verstappen meanwhile reports "some weird engine behaviour in Turn 13" that recurred later in the lap when he was off-throttle that caused the car to jump "a lot".
Verstappen had to have his wits about him there, as he comes up on a slow-moving RB into the Turn 16 right-hander. We've seen those end in tears before.
Sainz improves to third, on a 1m30.164s, but it's still half a second down on Verstappen. Russell though gets closer with a 1m29.939s on his most recent effort, but remains second.
Leclerc says the Jeddah Corniche circuit is "like Mario Kart" and is complaining that "there are plastic bags everywhere". Presumably those are equivalent to the in-game bananas.
We've just 10 minutes left of FP1, and you have to say it's been pretty enjoyable as practice sessions go with constant chopping and changing of the order. Will there be any more soft runs before we call time on proceedings?
It's only for P12, but Ricciardo has set a new personal best on the medium to muscle in ahead of Ocon. But bouncing or no, the timesheets are rather more encouraging for Alpine than they were last week in qualifying.
As we enter the closing minutes of the session, the two Haas cars are bringing up the rear but neither to our knowledge has used the soft tyre as they continue to log laps on the compounds they will use in race trim.
Sargeant has a bit of a scare behind one of the Ferraris that causes him to go up over a kerb and radio an expletive. "Don't worry about him," the American is calmly told.
We don't expect to see many track limits notifications pop up this weekend, but Gasly has been issued a black-and-white flag for not following the race director's instructions on that issue.
There's the chequered flag to bring the curtain down on a thoroughly entertaining FP1 session. Max Verstappen was quickest from Fernando Alonso and Sergio Perez.
It's a 0.186s advantage then for Verstappen, with Alonso leaping up the order late in the day to slot in between the two Red Bulls after Verstappen and George Russell had earlier traded times atop the leaderboard. At one stage Russell went from 0.003s behind to the same margin ahead, making us briefly question whether new glasses were required.
Mercedes is one of several teams that has brought an aggressive rear wing layout to Jeddah, our eagle-eyed technical experts have informed us. You can read more on that here.
Russell ended up fourth in the times ahead of the two Ferraris, with Leclerc leading Sainz. Norris was seventh ahead of Hamilton and Stroll after the latter's touch with the wall. Albon completed the top 10 for Williams.
Bottas was the first man to take soft tyres in the session and ended up 11th, ahead of Ricciardo and Ocon. Sargeant was 14th ahead of Piastri, Tsunoda and Gasly, while Zhou, Hulkenberg and Magnussen rounded out the order.
We'll take a breather there and rejoin you later for the resumption of hostilities in FP2. That will kick off at 5pm GMT. We look forward to seeing you then!
It's very strange that the clock hasn't started ticking down as it would normally do in a practice session. Only qualifying - and the race to a limited extent - see the clock stopped.
