F1 | Free practice analysis in Jeddah: Hamilton in form, Verstappen manages

The first day of work in Saudi Arabia as far as Formula 1 is concerned is over. In Jeddah Lewis Hamilton finished ahead of everyone after the second free practice session, trailing Bottas, his teammate, by a few thousandths. Max Verstappen was only fourth, also behind an excellent Pierre Gasly. The feeling is that the Dutch driver didn't push too hard: let's remember that Red Bull has decided not to change components on the world leader's power unit, which at this point should complete the season with the engine installed in Sochi, now seven races ago.

Let's go into a little more detail on the matter: Pirelli brought the C2/hard-white tires; C3/medium yellow; C4/soft-red, a choice that at the moment does not seem to give a great advantage to those who use the softer compound, at least on the fastest lap. According to what we saw on the track, as also reported in our table below, Hamilton and Bottas recorded their best times with the yellow tyres, and were unable to improve on the soft ones (also due to traffic, ed.), but even with a clear track in front of them, the split times weren't so exciting.

As far as race pace is concerned, the difference between Hamilton and Verstappen seems too abysmal to be true, even Ocon, Russell and Gasly seem to be going better than the Dutchman, and we don't believe it can be true. More than anything we think that Max is managing his components, as is logical, on a Friday when he decides absolutely nothing. However, this must in no way underestimate the performance of Mercedes, which seems really on the ball this weekend, as does Lewis, who is more determined than ever to arrive in Abu Dhabi at least with the disadvantage completely eliminated compared to his rival.

As for the "others", the performance of AlphaTauri and Alpine was good, even Tsunoda (out of the table) was eighth on the hard tire half a second behind the English champion's time, demonstrating how the difference between compounds was not very significant in this first day. Ferrari seems a moment behind, but still ahead of McLaren, which usually hides on Fridays. Leclerc's accident at the end was not a little jarring, as he wrecked his SF21 with an error in the third sector and which could compromise some components of his power unit, given that he was using the newest specification.