F1 Saudi Arabian GP Live Commentary and Updates - FP3 & Qualifying
Friday's action from the second round of the 2024 Formula 1 season.
Live AppleTV Race Audio
Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso topped Thursday practice at Jeddah but Red Bull remains the hot favourite ahead of the main event in Saudi Arabia.
Carlos Sainz has withdrawn from the rest of the race weekend with appendicitis and Ferrari has called up junior driver Oliver Bearman who will make his F1 debut as his replacement.
Saudi Arabian GP final practice starts at 1:30pm GMT (4:30pm local time) ahead of qualifying at 5pm GMT (8pm local time).
Just in case you've been otherwise engaged so far today, here's the headline news from this morning: Oliver Bearman is making his F1 debut, at Ferrari no less, after Carlos Sainz was struck down with appendicitis.
We'll take a breather there on the live blog with qualifying a little over two hours away. Be sure to join us later as we discover where Bearman will end up on his debut, whether Zhou's car can be repaired in time and if anybody can stop the rampant Red Bulls. Thank you as always for joining us.
Hamilton is the only other driver with a previous pole here, and from his comments about the car bouncing on the straight he'll have his work cut out in qualifying.
Unsurprisingly, the happiest campers heading into qualifying will be Red Bull. But if Sergio Perez is going to make it a third successive Jeddah pole, he will have to really pull his finger out to stop Verstappen.
It will be a race against time for Sauber. The mechanics have plenty of work to do if they want to get Zhou's car prepared for Q1 later on. Perhaps they can take inspiration from Audi's rapid rear-end changes at Le Mans way back when...
As the drivers head back to the pits, they'll be after a bite to eat but the work won't stop there as they pore over data with the engineers concerning those final push laps on the softs and the areas that can be improved on for qualifying.
Meanwhile, in breaking news Audi has formally confirmed plans to accelerate its takeover of the Sauber team, ahead of the German manufacturer’s entry into grand prix racing in 2026. You can read about that here.
Drivers are now lining up on the grid to do their practice starts before returning to the pits. But not among that group of 18 were Zhou, following his crash that brought out the red flags, or Sargeant. No timed laps on the board for the Williams man after he tapped the Turn 22 wall with his left-front wheel and had to pit for repairs.
Stroll was seventh ahead of Piastri and Hamilton, who complains that his car is still bouncing. Bearman ends up tenth, nine tenths down on Verstappen. Not a bad piece of work at all under the circumstances.
Leclerc ends up 0.196s behind Verstappen, with Perez 0.494s adrift of his team-mate in third. Russell was just over half a second down in fourth, ahead of Norris and Alonso.
Verstappen was fractionally slower on that tour, his final one of the session as the chequered flag comes out, but he's still done enough to end FP3 on top ahead of Leclerc and Perez.
Any hopes Magnussen had of improving are scuppered by a big wobble in the final corner which drags him well wide and delays him nailing the loud pedal. But elsewhere the timing screens are changing faster than we can type.
Magnussen was the first man at the end of the queue and begins his flyer. But there are a fair few slow-moving cars on prep laps for the Dane to dodge, which will remind him of his 2021 season racing in IMSA.
Naturally everybody wants to get the session running again, but arguably none more so than Bearman who has only used mediums so far. No quali sim prep for him yet.
If that proves correct, it will rob us of a chance to see the final quali sim runs. Leclerc and Alonso in second and third both set their times on mediums, remember.
Zhou hit the wall with the back end of his car first, then slid for a secondary impact into the Tec-Pro barriers. "Sorry, I don't know what happened," he reports over the radio.
There's a mini-lull in the action at the moment with several cars in the pits, but Albon takes advantage of the clear road to vault into seventh on the softs.
Stroll was investigated for impeding Gasly in Turns 5-7, but no action is taken. The Alpine driver was none too impressed over the radio, while we heard Stroll say earlier that he wasn't given a message that Gasly was approaching quickly behind him.
We've not seen any more headline-grabbing times from Bearman, but he's sensibly going about the business of logging laps and getting used to the car to make up for lost time. Nobody has completed more than his 17 laps in the session so far.
Alonso improved last time around to go tenth on the medium, slotting him in behind Albon (ninth, soft), Piastri (eighth, medium) and Hulkenberg (seventh, soft).
There is the answer to why Sargeant was looking glum in the pits and had yet to set a timed lap. He clonked the wall with his left-front tyre at the fast Turn 22 left-hander.
Magnussen goes again on the softs and moves up to third on a 1m29.485s. Not a bad effort that from the Dane, although it's not clear what fuel levels and engine modes Haas is running relative to the rest. As usual, everything we see in practice comes with an asterisk of unknowns next to it.
There's a big lap from Verstappen, who goes back to the top on a 1m28.893s, three tenths clear of Leclerc. Verstappen remember was on softs, Leclerc used mediums to set his time.
