Mercedes reflects on a ‘scrappy’ first day at F1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

The Silver Arrows admit they have some work to do ahead of Friday’s qualifying session

The second race weekend of the 2024 Formula 1 season got underway in earnest Thursday, with two practice sessions at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit ahead of this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

At Mercedes, while George Russell seemed a bit more comfortable with the setup of his W15 — placing P4 in the first session and then P2 in the second — Lewis Hamilton was a bit off the pace, placing P8 in both sessions.

And the team believes there is still more pace to be found ahead of qualifying.

“It was fun to be back on the track here in Jeddah. It’s a really high-speed circuit so that’s enjoyable. We didn’t have the car in the perfect window and FP2 was a little bit of a scrappy session,” said Russell in the team’s post-practice media report. “The times looked good on the single lap, and we’re not too sure yet where we’re at on the long runs. We did a lot of testing in FP1 with different set-ups across the cars. We then made some changes for FP2 to try and learn more about the W15.

“It’s still very early days; it’s only the second race of the season and the second circuit we’ve ran at in anger,” added Russell. “We need to keep on building on our learnings and everyone will be hard at work overnight to eke out more performance. It’s so close once again so let’s see what we can do tomorrow.”

Hamilton shared a bit more frustration with the rear of the W15.

“It was a difficult day. I was lacking a little confidence in the rear of the car. We did some work on the set-up from session-to-session and changed the car quite a bit. The main issue I was struggling with in both FP1 and FP2 was still the rear though,” described Hamilton. “I had a few big moments out there and on such a high-speed track like this, you need to have full confidence in that. I haven’t quite got that yet. We’ll go through the data tonight to see how we can improve. George was clearly in a happier place with the car today. We went in slightly different directions so hopefully we can learn from that and find the right solutions.”

Hamilton and the team were also summoned to meet with race stewards after the second session, for an incident on the track with Williams driver Logan Sargeant. Hamilton was not aware that the Williams driver was on a push lap behind him, and was cited for impeding:

The driver was given a warning, and the team was fined as well:

Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin noted that the two practice sessions were a bit “messy,” and that the team needs to find better balance — and pace — ahead of qualifying on Friday.

“We’ve covered quite a range of set-ups over the course of the day. Ultimately, it doesn’t feel like we’ve ended up with either car in the best place. The single lap was messy and compromised by traffic,” said Shovlin. “A cleaner session would have helped but we’re also lacking a bit of grip in the high-speed. We will be looking overnight at solutions to that. Our long runs weren’t very long either, which wasn’t ideal. From the limited date, we have reasonable pace but neither driver was happy with the overall balance. The summary therefore is that we’ve got lap-time to find overnight. The positive is that we have plenty of areas to go looking for it.”