McLaren Racing – Everything you need to know for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

Bahrain was a tough introduction to the campaign for the team and the MCL36, but the nice thing about the modern F1 calendar is that you don’t particularly get to dwell. Back when Bruce founded the team, there were four months between the first race and the second; this year we have four days…

Admittedly, that’s a little more straightforward when the cars are traveling by 777 Freighter rather than cargo ship (our Extreme E team may demur) but it certainly leaves no time for introspection. The garage crew are flat-out packing down, shipping out and setting up, while the engineers, on the road and back at the MTC, are pouring over the treasure trove of data gathered during the two complete race distances completed in Sakhir on Sunday evening . While we’re staying in the Middle East for the next leg of our 2022 odyssey, the Jeddah Corniche Circuit presents a very different challenge to Bahrain. It’s fast, it’s flowing and it’s unlike any other circuit on which we race.

To get you up to speed, we’ve got McLaren F1 drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, as well as Team Principal Andreas Seidl, to give us their take on the white-knuckle thrills of Jeddah.

Key info

What they say

“I’m excited to be back at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. It’s a cool track and extremely quick for a street circuit. It kept us on our toes last year and it will be great to see how the 2022 cars run here.

“We’re going into this weekend with our heads held high. Bahrain was a tough one, but we’ll keep moving forward as a team and take everything we’ve learned from last weekend to make this one the best we can. I trust the team both here and back at the factory and I know they’re working day and night to make us stronger for this weekend. We know what we’re capable of achieving so we’ll give it our all and leave nothing on the table in Saudi Arabia.”

“Last weekend was disappointing, but on the positive side, we learned a lot about our car during the course of the race, which we can take into the Grand Prix in Jeddah. We’re looking forward to getting back on track at this incredibly fast and flowing circuit.

“The Bahrain Grand Prix was tough, and not how we wanted to start the season, but we’re putting together our plan to get higher up the grid. We know we might not get there in one weekend, so we’re focused on learning as much as we can at every event. There’s a long season ahead of us with a lot of opportunities and that’s exactly the case in Saudi Arabia. We’re going to continue to work as a team and help each other to move forward, that’s why Formula 1 is a team sport. We’ll keep at it, keep our heads held high and do everything we can to progress at every weekend.”

“The Bahrain Grand Prix was not how we wanted to start the season. It’s clear that we have work to do, so we’ll be working hard to bring more performance to the car as quickly as possible. The team are analyzing our performance from Bahrain so that we can learn and improve, already starting in Jeddah It is only the second race with these new cars and the new race weekend format so we must stay focused on all operational aspects.

“We’re looking forward to going racing again in just a couple of days’ time. Jeddah is an exciting track with some great features so it will be interesting to see how the new regulation cars run. Let’s get back on track and keep pushing .”

Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

What the stats say

There isn’t a huge array of statistical data to throw around for the Saudi Grand Prix, given its only running took place only 110 days before the first practice for this year’s race (which could also be expressed as 15 weeks and 5 days, 2640 hours, 9,504,000 seconds – and did we mention we’re a little light on the stats for this one?). The last time we were here – all the way back in December – Daniel finished fifth and Lando tenth, in one of those glass-half-empty races where we’d hoped for better before suffering some bad luck with red flags. We had two of those, and two safety cars, and three virtual safety cars. Those disruptions make getting a good read on strategy really quite difficult, but reading between the (Safety Car) lines, it looks like everyone was capable of running a one-stop race on the Hard and Medium compounds, with only Lando and Fernando Alonso using the soft tyre, and neither of those doing so entirely through choice.

If you want a really illustrative statistic about the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, the one to look at is Lewis Hamilton’s pole position time. Lewis lapped the 6.174km track in 1m27.511s, for an average speed of 255km/h. Of the current calendar, that puts it behind only Monza in the list of flat-out speed merchants, and historically, only trailing the previous Silverstone layout and the Österreichring in F1’s list of speed merchants. It’s worth pointing out that those other three tracks are permanent circuits: while Jeddah is blazingly quick for any circuit, for a street track it’s absolutely wild.

session times

What to watch out for

Based on last year’s race, we should really make this section ‘what not to look out for’ because that’d be a much shorter thing to read. Everywhere and everything about this race is worth looking at. Jeddah has more corners than any other current F1 circuit – but in this instance, ‘corner’ is something of a misnomer. Officially there are 27 (beating Singapore’s 23) but only seven of these are braking points. The rest are taking flat-out or – in common with many of F1’s all-time greats – taken with just a sight feather on the throttle.

For the flat-out parts of the track, the wiggly bits have been designed for the cars to negotiate with less than 2.5-g. This is the magic number because, for the purposes of DRS, something under 2.5-g can be classed as a ‘straight’ (though the Geometry Police might be knocking on Dr Carsten Tilke’s door to inquire about that). Thus, while Jeddah really doesn’t do straight lines, it also manages to cram in three good-sized DRS sections. Turn One, the slowest point on the track, comes at the end of the final DRS zone, and was the place where most of the action happened last year, though with these cars demonstrating in Bahrain that they can follow more closely, realistically all three zones are in play – as are some of the non-DRS sections of track.

This isn’t quite the same circuit as last year—though the track itself hasn’t changed. The powers that have been moved the barriers back from the edge of the track in several locations, keen to improve sight-lines, following a few nasty accidents last year. At the same time, they’ve also made the circuit a little faster by replacing the traditional fences with metal ‘Monaco’ barriers. These don’t mind a little gentle rubbing from drivers attempting to absolutely nail an apex…

So, will the track be quicker this year? It almost certainly would be with a 2021 car, but with the new machinery it’s a little more difficult to judge. Last weekend the fastest lap in Bahrain was 2.5s down on the best from 2021, and undoubtedly the new cars are slower – but they’re not slower across the board. The consensus from pre-season testing and the first race of the year was that they’re slower in slow corners, quicker in fast corners – and Jeddah has a lot of fast corners.

What to wear… and read!

Hot off the press, our yearbook is now available. Looking back at McLaren’s racing activities across a packed 2021, it provides exclusive insight into every grand prix but also covers IndyCar, the esports exploits of McLaren Shadow, and the launch of McLaren Extreme E. We will donate 10% of the sale price to Mind , our mental health charity partner, for each yearbook sold. Meanwhile, for anyone keen to get off the sofa, and put in some high-level training effort, the new McLaren performance range is available now. We have kit for everyone and suitable for every kind of work-out, from this performance vest for women, to our ¼ zip tops for men. Finally, as road-tested by our trackside team at the Bahrain Grand Prix, we’ve got our new 2022-design facemasks in the shop, available in both papaya and grey. Check them all out on the McLaren Store now.

Plus one

While it’s all eyes on Jeddah this week, looking down the track, everyone in F1 has the debut of the Miami Grand Prix circled on their desk calendar – quite possibly using a non-official glitter pen. Several years in the making, it’s going to be a huge event, an enormous party and, we’ve got a spectacular competition lined up for our McLaren Plus members… that we’re keeping top secret for the moment! We’ll be dropping details after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix… which makes this the ideal time to sign-up for McLaren Plus, if you haven’t already done so.

McLaren Plus is the most inclusive, rewarding and accessible fan program anywhere in Formula 1. You’ll receive unparalleled access to the team and more giveaways and exclusive competitions than you can shake a papaya umbrella at. And the best thing is that isn’t completely free. So…y’know…why not?

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