Promise and frustration at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit

After a confidence-boosting first points finish of the season in Bahrain, we headed to Saudi Arabia aiming to build momentum. The team showed strong pace throughout the weekend - including topping the timesheets in Friday’s opening practice - but ultimately left the Red Sea venue empty-handed following a dramatic early exit for Pierre and a strategic gamble that didn’t pay off for Jack.

Riding high early on

The weekend in Jeddah started well, with Pierre setting the fastest time in the opening free practice session. His 1m29.239s lap was just 0.007s quicker than Lando Norris, and while FP1 took place in hot, sunny conditions unrepresentative of the rest of the weekend, Pierre was pleased with the car's balance and felt confident from the moment he left the pits.

The second Friday practice session under the floodlights proved a little trickier. Overall grip was lower, and Jack in particular faced the challenge of adapting to the high-speed nature of the track. Nevertheless, he was satisfied with his long run on the medium compound tyre and continued to build confidence with each lap.

An opportunity missed

Saturday brought further encouragement, as Pierre was happy with the team’s overnight progress and qualified inside the top ten, securing ninth place on the grid - although the feeling within the engineering room was that sixth might have been possible, but the run plan was skewed due to the red flag for Norris’ crash.

“We pushed after the red flag in Q3 to get Pierre two timed laps with a pit stop in between,” explained Racing Director Dave Greenwood. “However, Pierre aborted the scrubbed lap, which put us out of sync and meant we had to box, which didn’t help with tyre preparation.” Ultimately, Pierre’s final lap in Q3 wasn’t an improvement on his Q2 time, but the result still marked a solid starting position for Sunday’s race.

For Jack, overnight changes to the car’s setup paid dividends, and he reported a much better feeling from his very first lap in FP3. Despite the improvement, he narrowly missed out on a place in Q3 and started the race from 17th.

An early exit

Unfortunately, Pierre’s Sunday came to a premature end after contact with Yuki Tsunoda on the opening lap. It was a frustrating conclusion to a weekend that had shown real promise. Speaking afterwards, Pierre said: “I had a good run out of Turn 4 and I gave him as much space as possible, but it looked like he understeered off and there was small contact - first lap, cold tyres - which sent the car straight into the wall. It’s racing, but I thought, we’d have the pace to fight the Williams. On a positive note, we were competitive all weekend. It’s just a shame not to capitalise on that.”

During the resulting Safety Car period, Jack was among several drivers to take a strategic gamble by pitting early for hard tyres. However, the pace couldn’t be sustained and he was forced to stop again on lap 32 for a fresh set, eventually finishing P17.

The final whistle

Away from the circuit, there was time for some light-hearted competition in the days between Bahrain and Saudi, as Pierre joined fellow drivers including Paul Aron, Guanyu Zhou and Isack Hadjar for a friendly football match. Sporting his Versailles FC jersey, Pierre helped his side to a 6-4 victory - a fun night ahead of what proved to be a tough Sunday in Jeddah.