Why Ferrari might rue costly errors in Jeddah as the leaders get closer

A major measure of success come the end of this first season of Formula 1’s newest ground-effect era will be the number teams duking it out for the constructors’ crown. If it’s to be two, the status quo will have been upheld after the most recent Mercedes and Red Bull duel. Any advance on that, the radical technical overhaul will have tangibly made the sharp end of the grid more competitive.

The slight problem last time out in Bahrain, however, was that Ferrari had simply replaced Mercedes in the duopoly rather than create a three-way fight for the ages. As the Silver Arrows again struggled with porpoising like in testing, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell slipped into an effective no-man’s land - adrift of the top but ahead of the midfield pack.

Promisingly for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, which seems set to go ahead after all, the three-pointed star initially appears to have narrowed the gap to Red Bull and Ferrari, even if it’s still some way from level pegging. That arrives as the Scuderia drivers, fresh from their 1-2 in Sakhir, played it fast and loose with the barriers to deprive themselves of data.

FP2 overall order

Jeddah proved initially kind to Ferrari on Friday, as Charles Leclerc grabbed the headline times in both the hour-long practice runs. The early standings leader piloted his F1-75 challenger to a 1m30.772s in the gusty daytime FP1 to duly head Max Verstappen by 0.116s. Then in FP2, which was run when the asphalt was 10 degrees Celsius cooler - conditions that will best resemble the grand prix - Leclerc again set the pace in the qualifying simulations.

Although Verstappen went top of the timing screens over Leclerc by just two thousandths when he buzzed the line at 1m30.214s early on, the Ferrari driver soon responded. The Monegasque stretched his legs with a 1m30.074s to sit pretty in first place before the switch to race runs for the remainder of second practice.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1-75

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

But the lines are blurred somewhat in that Verstappen’s personal best was set on the medium rubber after he had to back out of his soft-tyre flier. Data Autosport has seen suggests the Red Bull was 0.2s adrift of Leclerc when Verstappen aborted his run, though.

For the Bahrain polesitter, the one-lap credentials had picked up from where he left off. That meant the agenda for Leclerc and Sainz might have turned to unlocking the yellow-walled medium C3 Pirelli compound so the speed could translate into race pace. Only that plan for both Ferraris was put paid to when they tagged the unforgiving concrete to head for an early bath.

F1’s fastest street track, the Jeddah Corniche Circuit is almost completely without elevation or camber. The only outlier is the long, banked Turn 13 left-hander. Here, Sainz was the first to get it wrong. As the Spaniard pressed on with a push lap that featured only a couple of minor hesitations on the throttle, he got on the power too early. Shod in C4 softs, he ran high and glanced the outside wall after the apex of the medium-speed corner.

The two driver errors, while small in nature, had far larger consequences to leave both sides of the garage poor on data in those critical race-like conditions

That benched Sainz for the remaining half-hour, and Leclerc seemingly didn’t want to be left behind. He wound up for a quick lap and almost immediately had to tame a spike of oversteer as he stamped on the brakes into the Turn 1 left-hander. He caught the slide in rapid fashion but only lasted three more corners.

Leclerc applied too much steering lock too soon at Turn 4 and clipped the apex wall with his inside front to immediately knock the tracking out. Leclerc cut the next curve and trundled back to the garage, from which he would not return.

His assessment was: “It was an unfortunate end to an otherwise good day. In FP2 it was a small mistake, but not one that makes me lose confidence. I expected the front to slide around more, and I clipped the inside wall at Turn 4.”

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The two driver errors, while small in nature, had far larger consequences to leave both sides of the garage poor on data in those critical race-like conditions. It marked a far cry from the apparent confidence the team had been exuding in FP1.

The Ferraris didn’t emerge from the garage for the first 17 minutes, with Russell the only other car to hold fire entirely. Seemingly in no rush, only after the red flag interruption - caused by Lando Norris clipping the 50-metre marker board for Turn 1 that had already fallen off - did Leclerc and Sainz hit the track with a little over 30 minutes to go.

Medium C3 tyre averages

*N/A Ferrari, Haas and Alfa Romeo

With the Maranello protagonists out of the picture, it was Max Verstappen who led his Red Bull colleague Sergio Perez in the race-run stakes. The Mercedes pair attempted to hang on to their coat-tails, knowing that with just five days to separate the chequered flag in Bahrain and free practice in Saudi, a total fix for the so-far troublesome W13 was almost impossible.

After running Leclerc close over a lap, defending champion Verstappen remerged from the pits with a set of C3 boots for an 11-lap run. Of those, six tours were representative of race pace to give the Dutch racer an average time of 1m35.197s. That gave him a 0.155s cushion over next-best Perez, the Mexican posting five representative laps from a run plan of 10.

More tellingly, Perez could steer his RB18 round the 3.84-mile circuit 0.522s faster than Hamilton - the seven-time champion delivering eight consistent laps from a 13-tour run on the mediums. Russell’s average from a longer 17-lap stint on the C3s, of which 10 laps were on the money, stood at 1m36.079s - another two tenths in arrears.

For the team that has sewn up eight constructors’ titles in succession, that is a stark gap to Red Bull. Yet for its employees and for those craving a three-way battle at some stage this season, the long-run averages can be a source of optimism. That is in so far as the best Mercedes in Jeddah has brought the deficit down to half a second, rather than the 1.2s chasm that opened in Bahrain.

In the context of F1, five tenths is sobering but the gap is being reduced. Further, Mercedes has now better positioned itself as the third-fastest team based on those FP2 runs, having slipped behind Haas, Alfa Romeo and Alpine in the equivalent session in Bahrain.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Once again, porpoising is hurting the W13 and its drivers dearly. Despite Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff reporting the team had dialled it out for the first time in final practice in Bahrain, the oscillating is not something the engineers have yet been able to turn off fully in all circumstances and from one track to the next

As Russell eloquently explained at the season opener: “This bouncing and porpoising we're experiencing, in the straight it’s going to slow you down because we're smashing into the ground rather than going forwards.”

In Jeddah, both Brits are bleeding time in the high-speed opening sector courtesy of porpoising. But less so, when compared to Bahrain, because of the time lost by the car kissing the asphalt and Mercedes being forced to run the car at a higher ride height. In Saudi, it's less quantifiable. As the track snakes right-left-right from Turns 5 through 9, a team source says both Hamilton and Russell are struggling to find the confidence as their heads bob back and forth through the tight confines.

As Mercedes trackside engineering boss Andrew Shovlin reported: “We tried a few more experiments to understand the bouncing issue here, some which made it worse, some which helped, but we don't yet have a solution to make the problem go away.

“We can reduce this slightly [on Saturday] as it's affecting the drivers in a few of the corners and costing time. Compared to Bahrain, the car balance is in a better place and in terms of degradation, we're quite happy with what we have seen today. Our single lap still needs a bit of work, but we've got the [FP3] to do that.

“Overall, though, a reasonable day but clearly, we still have a bit of work to do before we'll be troubling Red Bull or Ferrari.”

Indeed, Mercedes is not “troubling” the initial top two teams of 2022. But the gap is coming down to at least offer hope that the utopian scenario of a three-way battle for constructors’ honours might come to fruition this season. And in the more immediate future, Ferrari has created trouble for itself if it is to again keep Red Bull at bay.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images