Luke’s Weekend Take – Qatar GP 2024

Heading now into the Saturday sessions and we start looking at the Sprint Race where we get news that Sergio Perez and Franco Colapinto opt to starting in the pitlane as both had some setup changes and for Red Bull, they decided to use this race as another practice session ahead of qualifying and the race on Sunday. Everyone opted to go for the medium tyres apart from Guanyu as Sauber gambled and put on the softs to see if they can make something happen.

At lights out we see Norris get a good start off the line and so did Russell but Norris was able to cover him off and lead into Turn 1, Piastri manages to also get a good start and by Turn 1 he was side by side with Russell, after 2 corners side by side, Piastri was able to get into P2 behind his teammate. Max Verstappen got stuck behind the Ferraris and also went wide at Turn 4 and dropped to P9 by the end of Lap 1while Liam Lawson also dropped to P17 after starting in P10.

On Lap 4 Russell immediately started to push a bit in order to pressure Piastri and try get ahead of him once more, he does go for a move and does momentarily get ahead, but Piastri sticks it side by side on the turn and manages to get back ahead of Russell, McLaren, seeing this asked Lando to drop back a bit to keep Piastri in his DRS so that they can protect the 1-2 for the team. A bit further back we see Verstappen get back in the points as he overtakes Gasly on Lap 8 into Turn 1, while Guanyu was now in last place as his softs are falling off, it won’t be long until we see Sauber pit him and on Lap 11 they do pit him for some mediums till the end of the race.

At around Lap 11 back at the front we hear McLaren ask Lando to start driving slightly quicker as Piastri had nearly got Russell out of DRS and needed that extra tenth of free track to pull away, unfortunately this didn’t happen in time and Russell stayed in DRS. On Lap 13 we see Leclerc go for a move on Hamilton into Turn 1, they got side by side and once they start turning in, the pair touch a bit but nothing too bad and the future teammates managed to go through 3 corners side by side with some brilliant driving and by Turn 4, Leclerc was able to make the move stick and into 5^th where he originally started the race.

Lap 14 we see Russell back in DRS and goes for another move, but Piastri saw this coming and defended but this put him out of DRS of Norris which meant it could put him in trouble next time round. On Lap 15, Norris reports that his fronts are struggling and asks if he needs to save Oscar or push forward, the team asks him to help out Oscar so that they secure that 1-2 finish which is very crucial for their constructors championship against Ferrari. On the same lap we see Perez come into the pits to try a new front wing spec so that they can get some data on the wing for qualifying and the race tomorrow. Coming round on the last lap we hear Norris asking if he should give the place to Piastri and the team says no, they are happy for it to finish in this order but on the last turn we do see Norris slow down and Piastri takes the chequered flag followed by Norris, Russell, Sainz, Leclerc, Hamilton, Hulkenberg and Verstappen form the points positions. Norris gave up first to return the favour to Piastri for Brazil where it was Piastri who was in that position.

Heading now into qualifying for the race and we see that in Q1 we have some drivers getting some times deleted as they were going wide, Magnussen had a big snap at one point and he would need to have his floor checked as he spent a bit longer than he would have liked to on the kerbs. At the end of Q1 we end up losing Alex Albon, Liam Lawson, Nico Hulkenberg, Franco Colapinto and Esteban Ocon while we had George Russell go fastest, followed by Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.

Q2 was pretty straightforward with no drama and in the end, we end up losing Pierre Gasly, Zhou Guanyu, Valtteri Bottas, Yuki Tsunoda and Lance Stroll. For Q3 we start by seeing Fernando Alonso has his initial lap deleted for track limits, Alonso asks the team to check it as he said he didn’t gain any time, and it must have been millimetres, but the lap time wasn’t restored. After the initial runs we see Russell take provisional pole followed by Verstappen and Leclerc here, worth noting that Norris hadn’t put down a proper lap time, so his pace wasn’t shown straight away. In the end we see Max Verstappen take pole, followed closely by George Russell, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Carlos Sainz, Fernando Alonso, Sergio Perez and Kevin Magnussen will form the top 10. This was the first pole for Max since Austria this year, however this was later taken away as he got a 1 place grid penalty as he was driving too slow on an outlap and blocked Russell a bit who was also on an outlap, which in my opinion was a bit too harsh as he didn’t block anyone and this could open up a president for drivers to abuse the system.

Who do you think will come out on top in the race? Will Max be able to get another win? Will McLaren close off the constructors championship or will Ferrari have a great comeback and outscore McLaren to bring it down to the last race? I think we are in for an interesting race tomorrow. Tune in tomorrow to find out.