The second race of the championship brings us to Saudi Arabia, which features the fastest city circuit on the calendar. The circuit has different characteristics from the first round with very high-speed corners, low tire degradation, and an average lap speed above 250 km/h. It looks impressive especially when watching the onboard laps of the drivers as they push their cars to the limit.
As this is a completely different circuit and early in the championship, there were already questions before the first free practice such as:
- Will Red Bull be as dominant as in the first round?
- Is the pack really split into two groups?
In terms of qualifying, we can say that the group is split in two, Red Bull, Aston Martin, Ferrari, and Mercedes with Red Bull being with a small advantage over the others, and then the rest of the teams with alpine being the best of the rest. When analyzing the race, we need to separate Red Bull from the first group since their pace shows that they are in a different league.
