Every year, there’s something a little bit different about the Jeddah circuit, and a few further adjustments are planned for 2023, with a couple of the corners being reprofiled to improve visibility and also to slow the cars down slightly. Does that mean that the lap time around Jeddah will be significantly reduced? Let’s see.
The car and tyre package already seems quicker than 2022, if the Bahrain Grand Prix was anything to go by. A lot of that is down to a new design of front tyre from Pirelli, as the latest generation of cars introduced last year have a natural tendency to understeer. The redesigned front tyre now helps them to turn into each corner better and benefit from an improved balance. That’s where most of the extra speed is coming from, as well as the usual year-on-year development.
With the Jeddah circuit being so different to Bahrain, if the same cars are quick on both tracks, it means that these cars will work well everywhere – and that’s a really telling pointer for championship success this year. The main thing to look out for though in Saudi Arabia is the random factor: you always get the feeling that anything could happen on the Corniche track at any moment. And that’s what makes it so fascinating.
Discover more: F1 GP: everything you need to know about Jeddah
A race to remember
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