Challenging Quali Leaves Work to Do In Jeddah

A challenging qualifying session in Jeddah means George will start P7 and Lewis P8 at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Getting W15 into a beneficial working window proved difficult around the streets of the Corniche circuit, and with so little to separate the top 10 it made all the difference.

George, on a used set of Soft tyres, set a competitive lap time at the start of Q3. However, as he was pushing for more a new set of tyres, he lost the rear and was forced to abandon his lap.

Lewis improved on his new Softs for the final run but couldn’t manage higher than P8.

Race day (race begins at 17:00 GMT) is where the points are scored and the team will be focused on moving forward.

Saudi Arabian Grand Prix: Everything You Need to Know

George Russell

Unfortunately I was unable to complete my last lap on the new tyres. I made a mistake, which is on me, and that was that. My quickest lap therefore was on the used tyres. It was a strong one but if I had finished my final effort, I think we may have been fighting for P4 or even higher.

It is so tight out there and we saw last week that if you don’t get everything together, then you can lose several positions. We are still learning about this car; we were P1 and P2 in practice in Bahrain and P2 here again yesterday. We slipped back today but there is potential there. It’s a long season so we will be looking to understand more about the platform we have and deliver more consistently.

I am confident that we’ve got good race pace for tomorrow. We look quick in a straight-line, which is a bonus. It’s tricky to follow here though and it should be a simple one-stop with the degradation. We need to make a good start and see what we can do from there.

It will be difficult, but we will be giving it everything we’ve got to progress forward tomorrow.

Lewis

Lewis Hamilton

It was a very difficult day today. I was much happier in FP3, and the car was feeling much better than on Thursday. It was a real improvement, and I had a lot more confidence in the car. Unfortunately in qualifying, it felt similar to yesterday and I didn’t have the stability from the car that I needed. It was a struggle, and we were losing out particularly in the high-speed first sector.

Our race pace is typically better than our qualifying pace. We have also been quick in a straight-line so hopefully that helps us. It will be difficult, but we will be giving it everything we’ve got to progress forward tomorrow. If we can do so, that would be great.

Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO

That was a very annoying qualifying session! We’ve got a quick car, but it is on a knife’s edge. The drivers are struggling to squeeze out the lap consistently. George was on his way to a strong lap and could have been fighting for spots on the second row. Unfortunately he lost the rear of the car. Lewis meanwhile never had the feedback from the car that he wanted, and that meant he couldn’t go faster.

I think the race pace will be very close between ourselves, the Ferraris, and the McLarens. Our target is to try to be ahead of them tomorrow, but we know overtaking isn’t easy here. Last week, we thought we had a car that was quicker in race trim, but we were unable to show that. Hopefully we will have a better evening here in Jeddah. We will do our best and see what we can deliver.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We're disappointed to line up P7 and P8. That is particularly true considering the gap to pole position, but we'll have to find a way to make it work for us tomorrow in the race. Our performance in the high-speed corners wasn't good enough; we improved the car slightly overnight, but we'll need to make this better ahead of Suzuka and Melbourne.

We don't really know where everyone will stack up on long run pace tomorrow. Verstappen looked clear of the field, but it's quite tight behind and not many cars did runs that were long enough to get a clear read on degradation. It's normally an incident filled race here so opportunities may come to us tomorrow. We will look to take advantage of those but today just wasn't good enough.

2024 Saudi Arabian GP - Qualifying Results

1	VER	Red Bull	1:27.472	-
2	LEC	Ferrari	1:27.791	0.365
3	PER	Red Bull	1:27.807	0.383
4	ALO	Aston Martin	1:27.846	0.428
5	PIA	McLaren	1:28.089	0.705
6	NOR	McLaren	1:28.132	0.755
7	RUS	Mercedes-AMG	1:28.316	0.965
8	HAM	Mercedes-AMG	1:28.460	1.130
9	BEA	Ferrari	1:28.547	1.229
10	TSU	Racing Bulls	1:28.572	1.258
11	BEA	Ferrari	1:28.642	1.338
12	ALB	Williams	1:28.980	1.724
13	MAG	Haas	1:29.020	1.770
14	RIC	Racing Bulls	1:29.025	1.775
15	HUL	Haas	-	-
16	BOT	Sauber	1:29.179	1.951
17	OCO	Alpine	1:29.475	2.290
18	GAS	Alpine	1:29.479	2.294
19	SAR	Williams	1:29.526	2.348
20	ZHO	Sauber	-	-

The Best Images From the Saudi Arabian GP