It’s been a tough three weeks for the team in Arabia, but it ended with a great battle and our first points of 2022. To counter-balance that, we also had our first DNF of the young season – so, glass half-full or glass half-empty? The mood in the camp heading for home was definitely of the glass-half-full variety. It’s a relief to get on the board with some points – but the bigger deal was perhaps that, all weekend, we looked like a team that could score them, which hadn’t been the case a week earlier in Bahrain.

Part of that stems from getting a better understanding of the car after completing two race distances in Bahrain, and doing a lot of homework in the build-up to the Saudi Grand Prix. Some of it though, stems from going from a stop-start track to a fast, flowing layout that has – to use the deeply technical explanation – more of the bits the MCL36 does like and fewer of the bits it doesn’t.

Or, to put it another way…

Suiting a circuit is one thing, getting the most out of it is another. If F1’s first visit to Jeddah demonstrated anything, it’s that this is not a track for the faint-hearted. It’s one of the fastest F1 circuits of all time, right up there with Monza, which, for a street course surrounded by walls is a visit to crazytown – though the first red flag of our weekend wasn’t caused by anyone crashing but rather by a wanton act of hooliganism by Lando. Sort of…

Happily, that didn’t interrupt proceedings for very long, and the team had a good run through Friday’s practice sessions. While the predictions from engineering were for the car to be a bit happier in Jeddah, with everything so new this year, no-one was taking that for granted – but it soon became apparent that yes, the MCL36 was able to stretch its legs on the Corniche. 

The big story from qualifying on Saturday was, of course, the monster crash for Mick Schumacher. In the immediate aftermath of something like that, the garage is getting the same information as everyone at home, and when the world feed declines to show a replay of the event, everything’s a little quiet in the pit-lane. Fortunately, word soon filtered down from Race Control that Mick was awake and chatting to the doctors in the ambulance. At that news, everyone unclenches the things they hadn’t realised they were clenching. After that, the red flag delay is just… weird.

Weird, because there’s absolutely nothing to do during a red flag and that’s… weird. In a racing garage, there’s always the next job: the car is constantly being built or taken apart, or tested, or packed away into its box to go home – but when there’s a red flag, and you don’t know when it’s going to end, if the car’s ready to go, you don’t want to touch it and there’s very little else to do other than stand back and admire how very shiny it is.

When we did get going again, after holding for an hour, the drivers just failed to make it into Q3. Having put in a worldie a week earlier to simply make Q2, Lando this week was disappointed to not advance into Q3. Daniel was more philosophical, hailing it as progress… of a sort.

It put the team into a very positive mood coming into the track on Sunday afternoon. P11 and P14 (Daniel picked up a grid penalty for impeding Esteban Ocon) weren’t brilliant starting positions – but the car looked kind to its tyres compared to the competition, and the Jeddah Corniche Circuit already has a reputation for upset. Definitely game on. Or, as @GBrown84 puts it…

Opinion of what sort of race we might get varied from ‘procession’ to ‘unreal’ – because at this stage of the season with entirely new cars, no-one really knows anything – which is something even the people who usually know everything were cheerfully admitting. There’s a theory about new street circuits that insists everyone is well-behaved and circumspect the first year, and off the hook in the second. That the race here four months ago featured two red flags, a safety car, and an armada of VSCs, strongly suggested that theory might be wrong… or that we were in for something properly wild– like Jenson Button 2011 Canada wild. The pre-race message from Charlie on the pit-wall to the crew was be ready for… well, anything. Sort of like this…

In the end, what we got was dramatic… but within the acceptable parameters of drama. Both cars were looking good for a points finish before Daniel’s car went technical. It was, to put it mildly, very disappointing. 

…but we didn’t have very long to dwell on that as Lando was soon on the gearbox of Esteban Ocon. They had a furious battle over the last five laps, easily as good as the one between Max and Charles – which you probably didn’t see because you were watching Max and Charles. If you didn’t see it, it was like this but with shorter sideburns and more downforce. 

Lando wasn’t too thrilled as he crossed the line – losing the battle for P6 by half a length – but the team was reasonably happy with their evening’s efforts… and already thinking about Australia… 

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