Up Next
As the niggle between the Red Bull and Mercedes camps continues, so it would appear their on-track contest will rage on through the inaugural Qatar Grand Prix weekend.
Although Red Bull and Max Verstappen appeared to have a very handy advantage in the opening session, some adjustments to the Mercedes saw them emerging in the early evening of the second session marginally ahead of Verstappen’s pace and with Valtteri Bottas (on the medium tyres to the softs of Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton) the fastest of all on the long runs.
“Today went nicely with the set up,” reported Bottas. “The balance was pretty good, just minor tweaks necessary. It was the ideal way to start the weekend on a new track, not far off the sweet spot for me. Driving wise there is still more speed to find around a new track. Hard to make a conclusion based on today but it’s promising.”
Everyone was very quick to point out that this being a new circuit for everyone (bar Sergio Perez and Nikita Mazepin), there is still a lot of understanding to come and that the Friday times may therefore be a less reliable barometer of things than usual.
Certainly, Red Bull feel that the changes they made between the sessions may have been in the wrong direction, particularly regarding the balance on the soft tyre (though that’s unlikely to be particularly relevant for them). Hamilton is likewise dissatisfied with his initial pace and the deficit to Bottas.
“I don’t even know how big the gap is, but I’m off, I’m definitely not close,” he said. “At the moment, I’m a little bit slow, so need to figure that out tonight.”
The two Mercedes cars ran through the day with quite different set-ups to maximise the team’s learning of the new track and it’s expected that Hamilton’s will migrate to Bottas’ for the rest of the weekend.
With Christian Horner publicly challenging Toto Wolff to explain score marks on the Mercedes endplates in Brazil, rear wings were very much the focus of attention. Mercedes is adamant there are no score marks and has invited the FIA “to check them as many times as it wants”.
Watch the rear wing 👀 #QatarGP 🇶🇦 #F1 pic.twitter.com/N1ofpezHsy
— Formula 1 (@F1) November 19, 2021
Meanwhile, for the fourth successive race, Red Bull was having to make repairs there and Sergio Perez was observed to have the same oscillating flap as suffered by Verstappen at the end of qualifying in Brazil.
Hamilton damaged a front wing in the first session, Verstappen suffered a broken mount to his in the second. The front wing damage seemed to have been incurred over the rough serrations on the exit of Turn 10, but the rear wing issues remain shrouded in speculation and controversy.
Fastest FP2 long-runs
| Driver (stint length) | Soft | Medium | Hard |
| Bottas (8) | 1m28.123s | ||
| Hamilton (4) | 1m28.181s | ||
| Sainz (10) | 1m28.321s | ||
| Verstappen (4) | 1m28.379s | ||
| Vettel (3) | 1m28.676s | ||
| Perez (3) | 1m28.862s | ||
| Ocon (10) | 1m28.932s | ||
| Alonso (10) | 1m29.180s | ||
| Leclerc (5) | 1m29.608s | ||
| Norris (5) | 1m29.690s |
Mercedes continues to enjoy a significant straightline advantage over Red Bull. On their respective best laps Bottas was 7.5kp/h faster than Verstappen through the speed trap, and up to 10kph faster earlier on the straight.
The Mercedes is generally faster through the early part of the lap (specifically Turns 4-5 and 7), the Red Bull claws back time through the faster turns 14-15.
The below graph indicates which areas of the circuit Verstappen and Bottas were fastest on during their quickest FP2 laps.
AlphaTauri was very fast over a single lap but there may be some engine mode effect in the single lap times of Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda – which were super-quick. Such form was not repeated in the long runs of either driver.
The soft C3 tyre looked no more than 0.2s faster than the C2 medium over a single lap. The expectation is that gap will increase as the track evolves but even so expect more than just the fast cars trying to get through Q2 on the medium. There is a big advantage in range for the medium so anyone fast enough to avoid the softs will do so. The front-left is the limitation, to the extent that the initial expectation of a one-stop may migrate towards a two.
The hard (C1) tyre looks comparably fast to the medium over a long run and the drivers are expected to be applying some thermal management.
The one exception of avoiding the soft might just be Alpine. Although not particularly fast over a single lap, Esteban Ocon was able to make this tyre last way longer than anyone else, with a very solid 10-lap stint. Might Alpine be figuring on using the C3 soft to transcend its natural level to get to Q3, taking advantage of its gentle tyre usage? Fernando Alonso did a comparison run of similar duration to Ocon but on the mediums and was a couple of tenths slower.
The circuit received a generally positive review from the drivers: “It’s all high speed corners, definitely physical, quite nice,” said Hamilton.
“It’s easy to go off and gain time beyond track limits,” said Bottas, “and we need to watch out for that.”
“I’ve had a lot of fun driving today, I think it’s a really cool track,” said Verstappen. “FP2 was the first time we could test on the track in the evening so it was important to see how the car would react.
“There was quite a big change between the medium and the soft tyre for me, the soft tyre wasn’t amazing but it’s the first time here so there are a lot of things to understand. It’s difficult to say what will happen during the race with these cars, it’s tough to follow but I think over one lap it’s going to be good. Let’s see what happens this weekend, there’s still a lot of things to look at as everything is still so new.”
His Red Bull team-mate Perez called it an “interesting place” and admitted that it’s “not an easy track and tomorrow we expect the wind to change so it will be interesting to see what happens. I think we have some work to do overnight, we are not entirely happy with the balance of the car.”
As ever, whatever overnight changes Red Bull and Mercedes make will be crucial to deciding the outcome of a pivotal weekend in the title fight, as the off-track slanging match takes a backseat for the on-track fight that we all want to see.
