F1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix 2024: 7 storylines to watch

Photo by Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images

Changes come to Alpine, Carlos Sainz Jr. makes a statement in Bahrain, and more Saturday racing this week

The season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix gave Formula 1 fans some drama right out of the gate.

Not at the front, where Max Verstappen drove away from the field yet again to win the first race of the season, and his 55th grand prix overall, but further behind him. That is where teammates Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo were left frustrated following a set of team orders touched off a series of events that resulted in a pair of unhappy drivers, and a team looking to turn the page.

Whether Visa Cash App RB F1 Team can truly turn the page is one of the many talking points ahead of this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Can VCARB truly put Bahrain in the rear-view mirror?

In the wake of Saturday’s Bahrain Grand Prix, Ricciardo noted that he wanted to “turn the page” as the grid heads to Jeddah.

Will that be possible?

Since many have questioned on social media — particularly on Threads, so hello to my F1 Threads friends — whether the initial team order to Tsunoda was the right call, it makes sense to revisit that decision as the week begins. For those just catching up, or those who might need a refresher, in the closing stages of the Bahrain Grand Prix the VCARB drivers were running one in front of the other. Tsunoda was in P13, with Ricciardo behind him in P14.

Tsunoda was on the hard compound, while Ricciardo was on a set of softs.

Up ahead of them were a few drivers between VCARB, and a point for tenth place. Haas driver Kevin Magnussen was running in P12, while Zhou Guanyu had his Sauber in P11. Then there was the Aston Martin pair of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll in the points, with Stroll occupying P10.

On Lap 52 (of a 57-lap race) came the order from VCARB: With Tsunoda on the hards and Ricciardo on the softs, Tsunoda was to let his teammate through. It was an order that Tsunoda initially questioned, and continued to question after finally letting Ricciardo by.

Was the order the right call from VCARB?

On one hand, the data does support the request. Looking at timing data, in the laps up to that request from the team Ricciardo was running faster than Tsunoda. Here is the telemetry data from both drivers, thanks to the fine folks at F1-Tempo:

As you can see at the top, Tsunoda is represented by the blue line (with the white dots representing the hard compound he was on at the later stages of the race) and Ricciardo is represented by the white line, with the red dots indicating his soft compound.

Down in the bottom right, you see the closing laps of the race, and you can see that Ricciardo was running ahead of Tsunoda, and posting faster lap times. That was to be expected, given the softer compound. It is also worth noting that RIcciardo, following the race, indicated that the team discussed this very scenario at some point before the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Diving into the data a little more, and using Lap 50 as a reference point (remember the order came on Lap 52) you can see on that lap Ricciardo posted a time of 1:36.609, while Tsunoda posted a lap time of 1:36.827. Again, Ricciardo was faster:

So looking at the data for the two VCARB drivers, this might have been the right call. But there are 18 other drivers on the track, so it makes sense to zoom out a bit, and remember that Tsunoda was in P13, with Ricciardo in P14. If they wanted to get into the points, Ricciardo needed to pick up multiple spots, and with the order coming on Lap 52 he would have just over five laps or so to make up that ground.

Again, using Lap 50 as a reference point, Tsunoda was under a second behind Magnussen (0.553 second interval between the two), and Ricciardo was 0.762 seconds behind Tsunoda. So perhaps Ricciardo could have caught Magnussen. But that was only for P12. There were still Zhou, and Stroll, ahead of Magnussen.

And the gap from the VCARB drivers to Stroll — and the points — on Lap 50?

It was pretty big.

As you can see here from the interval data provided by RaceFans, there was almost a seven-second gap from Zhou in P11, and Stroll in P10:

The gap from Stroll to Tsunoda at this point? It was almost ten seconds.

Taking this step back, a few things could be true. At a base level, the underlying order was sound process. Ricciardo was running faster than Tsunoda at this point, so letting him through makes sense. However — gesturing at everything that order touched off — and given the bigger picture, did the order make sense? It was going to be tough for Ricciardo to catch Magnussen, let alone get into the points. Given all of that, maybe the order, while fundamentally sound, was not a wise move.

That is likely a results-driven argument, when the underlying order is a matter of process. The process was perhaps sound, but perhaps the lesson here is that this is a matter of clearer communication for the team.

Is the tension at VCARB something that will spill over to other teams?

At first blush, this seems like a silly question.

After all, the tension between Ricciardo and Tsunoda is an internal team matter for VCARB to deal with.

But bear with me for a moment, because it could be foreshadowing for wait awaits some other teams. Because Ricciardo and Tsunoda are just two of the 12 drivers set to see their contracts expire at the end of the season.

That is more than half the grid.

While Ricciardo and Tsunoda both have eyes on one of those expiring contracts — Sergio Pérez’s deal at Red Bull — they also have to fight to keep their current seats, especially with Liam Lawson looming.

Furthermore, VCARB is not the only team with both drivers on expiring contracts. Over at Sauber both Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu are in the last year of their deals. It is the same situation at Haas, where both Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hülkenberg are on the final year of their deals, and at Alpine, with Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon.

Some of those drivers might have designs on moving up the grid, but their are drivers waiting in the wings for their current spots, too. Take Zane Maloney, a member of the Sauber Driver academy who just swept the F2 races this past weekend. Sure Bottas and Zhou might dream of moving into a bigger seat, but they’ll also need to perform well enough to keep their current spots.

Given that, and some of the other drivers on expiring deals — more on that in a second — could we see what happened at VCARB in Bahrain repeated by another team, or teams, as the season unfolds?

Advantage: Carlos Sainz Jr.

Photo by Eric Alonso/Getty Images

Another one of the drivers working on an expiring deal?

A podium finisher in Bahrain.

Over at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz Jr. is set to leave the team at the end of 2024, as his seat is going to Lewis Hamilton for the 2025 season. That could make Sainz one of the bigger drivers available in the driver market, along with veteran driver Fernando Alonso.

Sainz absolutely drove like he had something to prove on Saturday, getting past teammate Charles Leclerc and giving it everything he had to chase down Pérez for P2. While he could not pull that off, it was a very strong start to the season for Sainz.

Who is certainly keeping his options open for 2025.

“Obviously next year the team will be different and I will be moving somewhere else, but I still have no idea where. I’m going to take my time to take the decision, the right decision for me, for my career, for the next three, four years that I might be in the next place that I go to,” said Sainz during pre-season testing.

“In order for that, I need time to see the whole situation, talk to all the teams and see who’s offering the best chance for me to be world champion in the future.”

His performance in Bahrain is one that certainly caught some eyes. The working assumption is that Sainz is headed to Sauber ahead of that team becoming the Audi works team in 2026, but a strong season might open up more options for him.

Can teams fix reliability issues from Bahrain?

While the 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix made some F1 history, as it was the first time the season-opening race did not see a single driver retire, that does not mean that it was a perfect race from a reliability standpoint.

Two teams with Mercedes power units — Mercedes and Williams — dealt with overheating issues on Saturday night. At Mercedes it led to “lift and coast” orders during the middle of the race for George Russell, and both Williams drivers noted the heating issues in their post-race comments.

Then there was this little issue for Lewis Hamilton:

Overheating was not the only issue for Williams. Logan Sargeant’s FW46 experienced an electrical issue, and both he and Alexander Albon were dealing with the team’s new steering wheel. Sargeant’s steering wheel had an electrical issue during qualifying, which cropped up in the race, and Albon noted some difficulties with the steering wheel during the grand prix.

At Ferrari, Charles Leclerc dealt with braking issues in the early going, as the team struggled to keep brake temperatures down. That caused Leclerc to go off the track a few times, and the Ferrari driver expressed his frustration a number of times in the early going. Leclerc managed to stay in the fight and his SF-24 came to him in the later stages on the hard compound, and he helped the team maximize their weekend with a hard-earned P4.

How these teams, along with everyone else on the grid, manage the quick turnaround will be a big factor in Saudi Arabia.

The Alpine restructuring

Well, that did not take long.

Alpine predicted a “challenging” start to the 2024 season following pre-season testing, and the results in Bahrain made that prediction rather accurate. Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon started P20 and P19, respectively, and only picked up a few spots on the grid due to mistakes elsewhere. Still, they both finished outside the points, and the A524 has been described as “overweight” ever since pre-season testing drew to a close.

That led to Monday’s announcement that organization changes were coming. Technical Director Matt Harman and Dirk de Beer, their Head of Aerodynamics, are out. Instead the team is reorganizing things, with three newly-created positions — a Technical Director (Performance), a Technical Director (Aerodynamics), and a Technical Director (Engineering) — all reporting to Team Principal Bruno Famin.

How quickly can the team turn things around? McLaren took a similar approach last season after their own slow start, and managed to rocket up the table into P4 by the time the 2023 season ended.

Can Alpine pull off a similar rise now?

Whither Aston Martin?

Photo by Eric Alonso/Getty Images

A year ago Aston Martin were the darlings of the F1 world. The AMR23 was the surprise package during pre-season testing, and when the dust settled after the 2023 Bahrain Grand Prix Fernando Alonso was on the podium, and Lance Stroll was in the points, having delivered a heroic drive so quickly after enduring a training injury ahead of the season.

While this year’s Bahrain Grand Prix saw another double-points finish from the team, it was not the P3/P6 the team delivered a year ago. Saturday night saw Alonso finish in P9, and Stroll behind him in P10, as the team began their year with three points on a rather “straightforward” evening.

Stroll got off to an incredible start, working around Nico Hülkenberg ahead of the first turn, but the Haas driver drove into the back of Stroll at Turn 1, dropping the Aston Martin driver to the back of the field. But Stroll kept his head down, and got himself into the points.

As for Alonso, he started up in P6 but could not hold off the McLaren duo of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, and also saw Lewis Hamilton get by him. But he was never truly under threat from behind, and he came across in P9.

“We completed our objective of getting both cars home in the points and that’s a good way to start the new season – so a big thank you to the entire team in Silverstone and trackside,” said Team Principal Mike Krack in the team’s post-race recap.

“We certainly optimised things this evening, considering our race pace, and scoring points is a reward for the team’s hard work over the last few weeks. It was a brilliant recovery drive from Lance after being hit and spun around at the first corner.

“The strategy for Fernando was designed to keep our options open, in the event of Safety Cars. In the end, it was a straightforward race for him. We need a bit more performance to challenge the teams ahead, but this is one race, one track and we will work hard over the coming days to make progress in Jeddah next weekend.”

The biggest question for Aston Martin coming into the year is one that will be answered over the coming weeks, if not months: Can they develop the AMR24 mid-season better than they developed the AMR23? We might get our first look at how that question is answered in the coming days.

More Saturday racing

Just a quick reminder.

Lights go out on Saturday for the second-straight race.

That means everything gets rolling a day earlier, just like it did in Bahrain. That means the first two practice sessions are on Thursday, followed by FP3 and then qualifying on Friday.

Sergio Show again?

Photo by GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty Images

The 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was one of just three grand prix races not won by Max Verstappen. Last year it was his teammate, Sergio Pérez, who captured the Jeddah Corniche Circuit for on of his two wins on the year.

Can Pérez repeat in Saudi Arabia? Or will Verstappen drive away from the field for the second-straight week?

We will find out soon enough.