Previously At The Qatar Grand Prix

We’ve only been here once before… but it was quite an important grand prix.

Rumours

Qatar

Grand

Prix

had

circulated

for

years

before

Formula

One

finally

visited

the

country

2021.

There

aren’t

many

racing

circuits

the

world

with

the

Grade

One

licence

required

host

grand

prix,

and

the

number

that

expense

with

intention

hosting

vanishingly

small.

that

regard,

and

with

Qatar

keen

ramp-up

its

sporting

footprint,

inevitably

Lusail

was

always

the

conversation.

However, when Qatar was announced as a late replacement during the Covid-affected 2021 season, it was more a bargain of necessity: other races had been cancelled, F1 needed suitable tracks – and preferably ones that could host a race late in the season without senior management freezing solid to their seats on the pitwall (Vegas, we’re looking at you).

As The Sun Sets, The Cars Hit The Track

At the same time as being shoehorned into the 2021 calendar, Qatar also announced a 10-year contract with F1, beginning this year. The reason for the discontinuity was that the Gulf nation had another fairly notable sporting event pencilled-in for the end of 2022… but also because the Lusail circuit was in need of a makeover, were it to become a permanent fixture on the calendar.

The track hasn’t changed, but the facilities have – because Lusail really was designed with bike racing in mind. There’s a few people in the Oracle Red Bull Racing garage who know a thing or two about MotoGP, and they assure us that Marc Márquez and Joan Mir on Honda RC213Vs take up quite a bit less room than Max, Checo and a pair of RB19s, and back in ’21 is certainly felt like the pit complex was a little more cosy than we’d ideally like (though we’ve certainly had worse). But that’s all changed now, with a ma-hooo-sive new pit building and garages in which you could play five-a-side. There’s better access with more tunnels and aprons, and a lot of new grandstands. The latter will be useful – because if the 2021 race is a good guide, the Lusail Circuit is a fine place to watch F1 cars.

The

Track

Given its provenance, it is inevitable that Mugello is the track with which Lusail is most often compared. It has the that same basic design philosophy of one long straight and then a mix of high and very high-speed corners to get back to the start of it. It’s more pronounced in an F1 car than on a MotoGP bike, as the vast amount of downforce on offer means there are far fewer braking points, and quite a few corners taken flat-out or – the hallmark of F1 at its best – either flat or with a tiny feather, depending on fuel load and how confident the driver was feeling.

Given there were only about seven weeks in between the 2021 Qatar Grand Prix being announced and the race taking place (though there was a bit more forewarning before that – you can’t just magically make freight appear in the desert) there was something of a scramble to find footage of four-wheel racing and get a hint of what was in store. Old GP2 Asia and WTCC races were under more scrutiny than is generally the case.

Spot The RB16B

What the team could see is that overtaking was difficult, track limits would be problematic and the tyres would face perhaps their sternest challenge of the whole year: the track was hot, the corner speeds enormous and the huge amount of lateral energy going through the tyres meant degradation would be high.

The

Race

In 2021, Qatar was Round 20 of an exceptionally tight 22-race season. It was the second half of a globe-spanning double header, taking place directly after the São Paulo Grand Prix, and had Max leading the Drivers’ Championship by 14 points from Lewis Hamilton, while we were 11 points behind Mercedes in the Constructors’ Championship.

A Classic Battle

Qualifying was very tight. Checo was eliminated in Q2 by less than a tenth but Max made it through into what turned out to be a chaotic Q3. He qualified P2, but on Sunday afternoon, 90 minutes before the race, received a 5-place grid penalty that dropped him to P7. Pierre Gasly had punctured in the final stages of Qualifying, there had been a lot of confusion, and Max was adjudged to have ignored a yellow flag. The full suite of warning systems – steering wheel, light panels, audio tones – hadn’t been triggered but a flag is a flag, he didn’t lift and paid the penalty, as did Valtteri Bottas. With night falling on Lusail, that spiced-up a race that was already pretty spicy.

For most teams, the race was heavily strategic. For us it was more straightforward: go fast, make places. Pirelli had cautioned against a one stop race – but plenty of drivers tried it, and four collected front-left punctures. There were 39 overtaking moves during the race and Checo was responsible for nine of them, putting on a masterclass as he rose from P11 to P4 at the flag. The pick of the bunch was a go around the outside at T1 on an extremely well-motivated Fernando Alonso, who was on his way to a first F1 podium in seven years.

Checo Charging Under The Lights

For once, Max was rather less showy. The penalty had put paid to his aspirations to win the Qatar Grand Prix but, eyes on the larger prize, he was all about consolidation, and went about it in a fairly brutal way, taking just five laps to get back up to P2. He passed Bottas, Sainz and Norris on the first lap, Gasly on the third and Alonso on the fifth – but by that point Hamilton had a four second cushion out front and, having been marginally quicker through the weekend, wasn’t likely to be caught. He matched Max’s pace and mirrored his strategy, stopping a lap later on both stops for the same tyres. The pair did pull out almost a minute on Alonso in third, however, which gave Max the opportunity to take an extra stop at the very end to bag the point for fastest lap. Heading to Jeddah and Yas Marina, it was the sort of season finale where that point might prove crucial…

Max Claims P2