#glad I waited though bc the checo start thing wasn't noticed right away

[charles-leclerc-official]

2024 Jeddah Grand Prix Race Analysis

Jeddah was certainly an exciting second race in the 2024 season, with Ollie Bearman's F1 debut in Ferrari, to Lance's DNF, to the absolute chaos in the midfield there was a lot going on.

I am of course going to start by talking about Ferrari Charles and Ollie's race.

Ollie

Ollie Bearman (18) the F2 driver was called last minute to fill in at Ferrari for Carlos Sainz, who had to have surgery to treat appendicitis. Ollie got to participate in FP3 before he then went into qualifying and came in P11.

Ollie managed to come in P7 during the race bringing home his first points in Formula 1, and some important constuctor's points for Ferrari.

Given how little prep time he had, Ollie adapted to the car very quickly. Even comparing his race to qualifying it's clear he was getting more at home in the car with each lap. He struggled the most on the low speed corners in those high braking zones(also where there are lots of lateral Gs which he did mention were tough) but he was not behind at all on straight line speed.

Ollie ran a remarkably clean race. He overtook 4 cars in total and only struggled a little with the car settings when overtaking Kevin Magnussen.

It cannot be overstated what an amazing first F1 performance he put on. Ollie did the most overtakes of the race in a car he'd only just driven the day before on the highest speed track in F1.

Overall this was an amazing debut and Ollie 100% deserved driver of the day!

Charles

Charles race was pretty clean. He started in P2 but lost the position pretty early to Perez and came in P3. Apparently there was an issue with the car and the way the tyres felt and I do think this impacted his ability to really push, especially at the beginning of the race.

He held on to P3 pretty easily.

The standout part of his race was of course setting the fastest lap on lap 50 on old tyres. That is actually kind of insane and I don't know why more people aren't talking about it. After his tyre wear looked so good, like too good.

Charles did say that he was having trouble warming up the tyres. This was seen in quali, but the impact was felt during the race. He had to try to defend and overtake while still warming up his tyres and that is probably what cost him that place to Checo. After he got the tyres warmed up the gap to Checo was pretty stable.

Ferrari

Ferrari is easily P2 in constructors. It was very helpful that Ollie brought home points to continue the lead on Mclaren and Mercedes.

We learned a few things from this race:

The SF-24 has made massive improvements on tyre degen on the SF-23.

However the car is having issues warming up the tyres which for sure impacted Charles' race. There are multiple ways to solve this issue, upgrades and adjustments should be able to take care of it(at the very least mitigate the issue) Another thing to note is that this race was at night and temps were cooler so that likely amplified what was already a problem. I wouldn't expect it to be as bad in Australia even if nothing is altered on the car.

The SF-24 still needs to do some catching up to Red Bull

The SF-24 is certainly more reliable, because Ollie was able to get comfortable pretty quickly and that is in part thanks to the reliability of the car itself(as well as his skill)

Kevin

So thoughts on Kevin's race and the Haas strategy in general.

Early in the race Kevin took a 10 second penalty for track limits. That basically ended his race. So Haas apparently decided to use him to hold off the rest of the mid-field so that his teammate Nico could score a point. In doing so Kevin got an additional 10 second penalty for overtaking off track.

Now people have criticized this strategy, as Kevin not giving the place back messed up a lot of driver's races (Yuki, Logan, Alex, Este, Zhou). But it was all within the rules, and if it's within the rules then I can't begrudge a team for playing to their advantage. It's up to the stewards to issue additional instructions, or for the FIA to change the rules to prevent such a strategy in the future.

The other notable thing was that Kevin still finished P12 which is higher than you'd expect given he racked up 20 seconds of penalties however he finished his race in just under the lap time, so he got a time and the cars behind him were stuck with +1 lap, which further negated that penalty for himself.

Jump Starts: Lando and Sergio

There were two jumped starts this race. One was spotted as it happened (Lando) and one was discovered after the race(Sergio)

Now neither driver received a penalty, and I think this was the right choice for Lando but not for Sergio.

Important things to keep in mind: jumping the start is penalized because it can create early forward momentum that can give an advantage in those first few seconds. Sensors under the track are used to determine if a car jumped the start.

Lando started moving before the lights, it was very obvious, but then he came to a full stop before starting again. He wasn't given the penalty because the movement did not register on the sensors and the stewards make the decision based on if the sensors picked up anything.

Now I do actually agree that this didn't really need to be penalized for 2 reasons.

Lando came to a complete stop after the initial movement and thus probably hurt his start more than anything

It didn't impact any race results. Lando didn't seemingly gain anything and there aren't any results that you could argue might have been different(if he had gained some advantage then it 100% should have been a penalty, but from what we saw he really didn't)

I think had his actions impacted someone's results etc then other teams would have pushed harder for a penalty, but it just wasn't worth it because this didn't really do anything.

However I do believe that Sergio's jumped start should have been penalized.

He didn't brake, thus has slight forward momentum going into the lights out

It potentially did impact the first turn pressure he was able to put on Charles right away

Mostly the fact he did for sure get some small amount of forward momentum for me makes it a pretty clear penalty.

Both of these didn't register on the sensors which is also weird because they were very clearly visible.

Other Drivers and moments of note:

Zhou: his race was compromised by both Kevin and the fact he had a 46 second pit stop

Lance: hit the wall, locked up and ended up in the barrier on lap 7, ending his race

Pierre: had a mechanical failure on lap 1 and had to retire the car

Max: won again

Oscar and Lewis: had one of the most tight battles of the race. Lewis defended for so many laps while Oscar was within DRS so often. Oscar did end up ahead and that lead on Hamilton was hard fought. Lewis' performance as well was impressive given the struggles of the current W15.

Esteban/Alpine: Esteban managed to come in P13 which is Alpine's best result so far this year.

Nico: Came in P10 scoring Haas' first points, placing them 6th currently in the constructor's

George: George battled the pace issues the W15 seems to be having. He is quick in the car, but the race pace seems to be suffering as well as the top speed. This was a bad track for the W15 overall looking at both his and Lewis' results.

This race was memorable for Ollie's F1 debut, and the youngest Ferrari driver lineup in history. As well as plenty of action in the midfield.

See you next time with Australia race analysis!