MPH: Will youth trump experience in Saudi GP with a tyre twist?

We have a potentially very interesting challenge facing the drivers in qualifying for this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

The combination of a super-grippy surface with very high-speed corners with the walls up close has always been challenge enough around the Jeddah track. But this time there’s an added complication, one which will really focus the minds of the drivers: Pirelli has brought its C5 tyre, one step softer than anything it’s run here before.

Why is this such a challenge? Because at very high speeds a compound as soft as this has a tendency to move on the carcass under extreme load. It gives a sensation very similar to the tyre sliding, but it’s not. It’s simply moving and settling to a new position. It was last used in Melbourne and into the fast Turn 9-10 sequence several drivers noted the feeling and the insecurity it gave them. Eventually you get used to it, they say; you learn to not react and just let the car ‘walk’ momentarily and try to stay committed, but it’s a spooky feeling in a seventh gear turn.

Jeddah is full of such turns. In particular the first sector sequence of Turns 6-7-8, 160mph +, sixth gear turns between unyielding walls where Max Verstappen was absolutely flat last year and where the Mercedes drivers George Russell and Lewis Hamilton were losing whole chunks of time as their car wouldn’t allow them to be anywhere near flat. At the apex of the sixth-gear Turn 8 Verstappen was carrying 164mph compared to the 157mph of the Mercedes, which was the slowest car of all through that sequence. But if there was a rival to Verstappen’s commitment through there, it was the F1 debutant Oliver Bearman, getting a surprise call-up by Ferrari to take the place of the incapacitated Carlos Sainz. In qualifying he was going through the sequence in seventh gear, his apex speed only a couple of mph down on Verstappen.

Bearman embodies the latest generation who have nothing to unlearn, who don’t particularly feel the odd balance of the current cars to be problematical. They strike a stark contrast to more experienced drivers struggling to lose years of muscle memory, especially those such as Hamilton and Sainz who have switched teams.

Sainz explained the process recently: “The Ferrari had certain car balance, a certain direction that we followed after three or four years of developing that car that required you to brake in a certain manner, turn in a certain manner, release the brake in a certain place – which you fall into a trap of after three years of muscle memory of doing everything that way. And when you jump into a different car, and especially under pressure in quali, you try and find the last two-tenths of the car. You fall into your muscle memory because that’s the muscle memory that you have from three years. It’s not that you need to unlearn them, because those traits are actually making me very quick in other types of corners. But you need to remember, in a certain type of corner, to not do it.” Corners where trail braking helped tame the Ferrari’s aggressive direction change just bring understeer when the same technique is used on the Williams.

Hamilton is suffering a very similar thing in the reverse of those car traits, finding the corner entry too aggressive despite mid corner understeer.

Imagine that mix of conflicting sensations as you’re trying to get through one of the fastest, most dangerous sections of track on the calendar — and into the bargain the tyre is moving around on its carcass. In Australia Bearman showed the hazard of his no-compromise attacking style, with a series of car-damaging offs. But it also brings a simplicity to challenges such as the one they all face this weekend. “It’s a high-risk, big-commitment track with a lot of grip and close walls. I really like it,” he summarised in the lead-up to the weekend.

Let’s see how it all pans out.