(Motorsport-Total.com) – Fernando Alonso’s best time in the second free practice session at the Formula 1 race weekend in Saudi Arabia seems to be of little value for the remaining days. With a 1:28.827, the Aston Martin driver was a little more than two tenths faster on a fast lap than his first pursuer, George Russell in the Mercedes, but in the long runs with a lot of fuel at the end of the session, Alonso and his AMR24 didn’t see any results country more.
Fernando Alonso in the second free practice session in Saudi Arabia
The 42-year-old was an average of 0.86 seconds per lap slower than Max Verstappen in the Red Bull, making the Dutchman the favorite to win on Saturday. However, Alonso not only had to admit defeat to Verstappen, but also to all the other top teams, which means that Aston Martin, like in Bahrain, is again only the fifth force in the race.
The second fastest team in the long runs behind Verstappen was Mercedes (+0.26), but the Silver Arrows were only able to complete seven representative laps with full tanks. Behind them are Ferrari (+0.43) and McLaren (+0.53).
But as in Bahrain, Ferrari seems to have been very conservative with engine performance on Thursday. On average, Red Bull and Mercedes were seven km/h short on the straight to the last corner in the long run, which is untypically bad for the Italian team. There should be more to come from the Scuderia in the important sessions on Friday and Saturday.
Midfield: Can Williams Aston Martin be dangerous?
In the midfield, Alexander Albon in particular was able to make people sit up and take notice in the Williams with a long run on the hard tires. With an average gap of 0.96 seconds per lap to Verstappen, the Thai was not far away from Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin.
The remaining four teams showed a relatively similar performance, which makes it difficult to classify the pecking order for Saturday. After Williams come Sauber and Alpine, each 1.23 seconds behind. Racing Bulls (+1.29) and Haas (+1.39) complete the field and have mainly relied on the soft tire in the long run, which has not been a good racing tire in the past.
Tire wear is not an issue in Jeddah
As in previous years, the extremely smooth asphalt ensures minimal tire degradation despite the fast corners in the first sector. On average, the three types of tires wear out by just 0.059 seconds per lap in long runs. That’s half the wear in Bahrain, although the tire selection in Saudi Arabia is already a step softer than the previous week.
Ferrari made the best impression among the teams with an average tire closure of 0.020 seconds per lap. While Red Bull and Alpine also handled their tires very well, Racing Bulls and Aston Martin were negative.
In all races in Jeddah so far, the winner has won with the medium-hard strategy, which should also be the optimal strategy for this year’s Grand Prix. Medium-Hard is about one and a half seconds faster over the entire race distance than Soft-Hard. The two-stop strategy is extrapolated twelve seconds slower than the one-stop variant.
There is a detailed analysis of the data from training Thursday in Jeddah on the Formula1.de YouTube channel to see where PACETEQ-Data expert Kevin Hermann assesses the situation of the teams using the strategy tool OneTiming. Click here now!