All you need to know - 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix preview
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The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix is held on the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, located in a waterfront area next to the Red Sea. The location presents similar challenges to Abu Dhabi with sand blowing onto the track and changes in wind direction from day to night.
Car setup will be very different to Bahrain. For Jeddah, it's important to have good stability throughout the fast corners that characterise the track.
The Jeddah Corniche Circuit has the most corners of any track on the F1 calendar with 27: 16 left and 11 right. This makes it more challenging for the drivers to get up to speed during the practice sessions.
There are six braking events across the lap with two of those designated as 'heavy'.
It is also the second-longest track we visit at 6.174km. Energy management across the lap is therefore tricky and puts more focus on the MGU-H and hybrid system performance.
With numerous long straights, drivers spend over 80% of the lap at full throttle and the circuit is ranked first in terms of time spent, and distance covered, using this metric.
Turn 13 has a 12% gradient, with banked corners opening up more lines and helping to build momentum onto the next sweeping, high-speed section.
Turn 2 is the slowest corner on the circuit, taken around 80 km/h, whilst the quickest are Turns 20, 21, and 26 which are taken at 300 km/h.
Sensitivity, which describes where you find lap time, is biased very strongly towards high-speed corner performance.
Owing to its nature as a street circuit, Jeddah has a high risk of incidents leading to Safety Cars, with incidents taking longer to clear and fast corners causing bigger incidents, while a longer track means there is more potential for mistakes. Across the two previous races in Saudi Arabia, there have been two full Safety Car periods, two red flags, and five Virtual Safety Car periods.
The circuit offers a medium level of grip but the sand blown onto the surface can influence this on the low-abrasion asphalt. The track, which overlooks the Red Sea, is not especially demanding in terms of traction and braking, with lateral forces predominantly affecting the tyres.
Several track changes have been made following last year's race "to deliver smoother, safer, and even more exciting racing."
These include:
'Rumble Lines' - which cause traction to be lost and slowing cars down have been added at Turns 3, 14, 19, 20, and 21.
Steel kerbs have been replaced by bevelled kerbs at Turns 4, 8, 10, 11, 17, and 23.
Driver sightlines, a concern in the last two editions, have been improved with the fence wall moved back at Turns 14 and 20 by 7.5m and 5m respectively.
The fence wall at Turns 8 and 10 have also been adjusted to improve visibility of the corner ahead.
Turns 22 and 23 have also been amended with the fence at Turn 23 adjusted and a bevelled kerb added - this is expected to reduce speeds there by approximately 50 km/h.
As was the case in Bahrain, this will be another night race – but the start takes place two hours later, at 20:00. This is the same time that qualifying and FP2 is also run. Temperatures are expected to remain largely consistent throughout each of these sessions as well as the race. The other free practice sessions are scheduled for late afternoon, in asphalt temperatures that can easily be 10 degrees hotter.