Saudi Arabian Grand Prix preview: Ferrari look to build on fast start

With the first race of the new era of Formula One now in the rear-view mirror, a lot of the unanswered questions we had ahead of the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix have now been answered, at least partially.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc won his 3rd career F1 race, leading every lap from pole and landing the fastest lap of the race. However, the story of the Grand Prix extends far beyond the Scuderia’s success.

We preview the second race of the season – including the latest Formula One odds – where the circus heads back to the Jeddah Corniche Circuit for the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix, and reflect on what we learnt from Bahrain.

Ferrari favourites for first title since 2008

Whilst the all-conquering Mercedes, despite protestations about their own performance, had entered the opening race as bookies favourites to land a ninth consecutive constructor’s crown, Ferrari’s faultless performance in Bahrain has seen them now installed as 21/20 favourites to win their first constructor’s title since 2008.

There are two key factors in this move. The first is that Mercedes are categorically not sandbagging as had been suspected in pre-season. The W13 is firstly not very kind on its tyres, which forced the Silver Arrows onto a much slower hard-tyre strategy in Bahrain, which, had it not been for the Red Bull’s misadventures (more on that later), we would have seen them finish a deserved fifth and sixth in the race.

The Mercs also appear to be much slower on the straights than Ferrari and Red Bull, and while some have questioned whether this is a result of drag, it seems more likely that the W13 had to be set up to minimise the porpoising problem that they seem to be acutely susceptible to, to the detriment of performance.

The second factor in Ferrari’s touted success is the Ferrari itself. With pre-season and the first race included, they are the only team that are yet to suffer any real mechanical or reliability issues. They were fast from the first day of testing, all the way through to the first qualifying session on Saturday and had the outright race pace to win on Sunday. Charles Leclerc has hit the ground running, taking pole position, the race win and the fastest lap of the race and is 9/2 to do so again in Saudi Arabia this weekend.

His teammate Carlos Sainz rounded off a weekend where he admitted to being off the pace of Leclerc with a second-place finish, to seal the perfect start to 2022 for the Scuderia. The much-maligned Ferrari power unit potentially looks to be the best on the grid this year, with the Ferrari-powered cars of Valtteri Bottas, Guanyu Zhou and Kevin Magnussen all finishing in the points in Bahrain. With little time to implement developments and changes between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, you would expect the Ferrari-powered runners to go well again this weekend too.

To finish first, first you have to finish

With power unit developments frozen, as well as the new budget caps in place, reliability is going to be a key factor in this season’s title race, and so it played out in the opening race.

Although the regulation changes had been discussed at length ahead of the new season, one thing that had arguably flown under the radar somewhat is Red Bull’s first race with their own power unit. Honda will be providing them with considerable help, but the challenge of an energy drinks company making their own Formula One engines should not be disregarded.

With Max Verstappen duelling with Charles Leclerc for the race lead, Sergio Perez moving to contest Carlos Sainz for a podium place and Red Bull-powered Pierre Gasly also in the points for Alpha Tauri, it was all going swimmingly. Of course, we now know that none of these three were able to finish the race, with Gasly suffering an explosive MGUK failure and both of the Red Bull’s suffering engine failures.

The rumour is that Red Bull had under-fuelled their cars in the hope of making up their weight disadvantage to Ferrari, but with new fuel in use this season and Red Bull having not completed a full race simulation in pre-season testing, they were ultimately caught short with this plan.

Yet with three of the four Red Bull powered cars not finishing and the bottom five finishers all being Mercedes powered, Ferrari will be further buoyed with the performance of their power unit in the early part of this season.

What we did see from Red Bull though, both in qualifying and the race, is that they have a very fast race car that is more than capable of competing with Ferrari as long as they can dial out any potential reliability issues. If they can do that in Jeddah, then expect Verstappen to be hunting for a race win this weekend at 6/4.

A new season Haas-terclass

Every team on the grid would have spent the winter dreaming of nailing the regulations to a tee and jumping several spots on the grid, but the one team that seem to have made these significant strides in Haas.

Having sacrificed last season to focus on the new regulations, as well as the off-track issues that had seen Nikita Mazepin replaced by former driver Kevin Magnussen before the season had begun, team boss Guenther Steiner was understandably thrilled with Magnussen’s fifth place finish in Bahrain.

Although they too had benefited from the DNF’s for the two Red Bulls, on outright pace Magnussen had claimed 7th place in qualifying and was en route to hold that position in the race. His teammate Mick Schumacher had suffered from a spin in the early laps, but also recovered to take his highest finish in F1, coming home in 11th.

With the much-improved Ferrari engine behind them, as well as a new feeling of excitement surrounding the team, everyone at Haas will be keen to continue with the development of the car and try to secure fourth place in the constructor standings this season if possible.

Magnussen is currently 8th favourite to win on Sunday at 100/1 but with the American outfit landing their first points finish since 2019 in Bahrain, they’ll be looking to repeat that success this time out too.

McLaren misery

One of the surprise packages of the opening race for all the wrong reasons was McLaren, who ultimately finished 14th and 15th with Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris, which arguably flattered them on overall pace.

Their troubles had started during pre-season testing in Bahrain, having looked impressive in Barcelona, and got worse as the opening weekend progressed. It appears they have a significant issue with over-heating brakes, which, when replaced in Bahrain, caused a lot of drag and left the two papaya cars well off the pace.

Were it not for the safety car, the McLarens would likely have been lapped a second time by the same race leaders they were competing with last season and in truth it could not have started worse for Zak Brown and his team. The hope had once again been of contesting for podiums and race wins this season, but that now looks a long way off as they seek to iron out their issues in Jeddah.

They’ve now drifted to 80/1 in the Constructors’ Championship market, with Norris (200/1) and Ricciardo (250/1) both at tripe figure odds to win this weekend. Fighting for points is now the short term aim for the Woking-based team.