The fastest street race in the world played host to Round 2 of the 2023 Formula One season on Sunday (19 March), as our 20 drivers took to the Jeddah Corniche Circuit under the lights in Saudi Arabia!

Although it wasn’t as enthralling as Bahrain was, there are still many points to review as we dive into what happened over the race weekend.

Reigning World Champ Max Verstappen continued his form from Bahrain by topping all 3 practice sessions, and Q1 by nearly half a second, however his luck quickly ran out as he was struck with an engine problem at the beginning of Q2, forcing him to start from a very disappointing 15th.

It would take an incredible drive to get into the top end of the field in the race.

Charles Leclerc’s own engine failure in Bahrain meant he had a 10-place grid penalty to his name for today’s qualifying, leaving a Hispanic showdown between his teammate Sergio Perez and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso to grab pole position.

It was the Mexican Minister of Defence, Perez who stormed to pole. Leclerc put his Ferrari P2, but would start 12th, meaning Alonso would join Perez on the front row. George Russell would start 3rd for Mercedes alongside Leclerc’s teammate Carlos Sainz. Lance Stroll put his car 5th in the other Aston Martin, and Lewis Hamilton would line up 8th.

When the lights went out on Sunday, it was Fernando who got the better start, and dived down the inside of Perez into the turn 1 chicane to take the lead. Russell held on to third from Sainz and Stroll out of the first corners. Coming up to the banked turn 13 however, Stroll got into the slipstream of the Ferrari, and pulled to the outside of Sainz. He held the line and swooped round the outside of Sainz into 4th place, an incredible move by the Canadian!

In the midfield, Oscar Piastri touched wheels with Pierre Gasly on the exit of turn 2, losing a bit of his front wing endplate. The piece that broke off his car tumbled down the track and found the front wing of his McLaren teammate Lando Norris, also damaging his front wing. I hope you believe me when I say Morecambe and Wise didn’t write the script to McLaren’s laughable start of the season.

It was too good to be true for Alonso though, as he was handed a 5 second time penalty for not being in his gridslot correctly, and by lap 4, Perez had used his DRS to dive down the inside of Alonso into turn 1. He locked up and went wide, but he managed to keep his Red Bull on the track, and he retook the lead.

Lap 7, and a battle was forming for P7 between Hamilton, Gasly and Leclerc. In the slipstream of both the cars infront of him down the pit straight, Leclerc gathered enough speed to sweep round the outside of Gasly into turn 1 in an amazing move. By lap 9, he’d got close enough to Hamilton to dive down the inside into turn 1, and move himself up to 7th.

Lap 12, and the hard-working Max Verstappen pulled off an identical move to Leclerc on Hamilton for 8th. Before the race, Fernando Alonso predicted Verstappen to be in P2 by lap 25, to everyone’s disbelief. Only time would tell if Max could live up to Fernando’s expectations.

The first safety car of the season came on lap 16, when Lance Stroll’s engine expired at turn 13, ruining a big points haul for Aston Martin this weekend. This triggered the rest of the field to pit for fresh tyres. After the round of pitstops, Verstappen managed to jump to 4th, followed by Sainz, Hamilton and Leclerc, who lost out bigtime thanks to another Ferrari strategy blunder.

Lap 22 and Hamilton was close to the back of Sainz into turn 1. He tried the outside line but thought better of it, and as a result got better traction out of turn 2, and swooped past the Ferrari for 5th. Just 1 lap later, Verstappen used his DRS to power past Russell down the back straight into the final corner and move up into third. Scarily, it was lap 25 when Verstappen dived past Alonso into P2 at turn 1, just like Fernando predicted. Maybe he should be the one trying to predict the race result, not me!

On lap 26, the brakes of Alex Albon’s Williams failed forcing him to lift and coast round the track at a slow pace until he found a safe place to park. A disappointing end to the Thai driver’s race, who was in the shout for points.

Apart from an incredible overtake by Zhou Guanyu on Logan Sargeant for 13th place, there was little to chew on in the remaining 24 laps of the race, leaving Sergio Perez to power across the line to win the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, leading home a Red Bull 1-2! Fernando Alonso finished 3rd for Aston Martin, ahead of the Mercedes pair of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.

Carlos Sainz beat his Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc for 6th and 7th respectively, ahead of Alpine’s Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, whilst Kevin Magnussen fended off a late-charging Yuki Tsunoda to take the final point for Haas.

In late drama after the podium celebrations, the FIA awarded Alonso with a 10 second post-race penalty for serving his original penalty wrong, promoting George Russell to third. However, after Aston Martin showed the FIA several instances where other teams weren’t penalised for the same thing, the penalty was later rescinded, and Alonso received his third place back.

I’ve only gone and predicted the top 3 correctly! I told you Sergio Perez loves a good street circuit! Maybe I am psychic after all. Round 3 is at Albert Park in Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix on 2 April at 6am. I’ll forgive you if you don’t get up to watch it, don’t worry.

Hoping to carry on this run of form, I predict that the top 3 from the Australian Grand Prix will be: Verstappen P1, Alonso P2, Leclerc P3. I’m feeling a Red Bull mechanical failure for some reason…

The 20 drivers will be looking to steal the thunder down under, while the western world is in slumber… make sure to tune in if you don’t want a good hours sleep!

🏃 Tour of Tameside 2023 🏃

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