Bearman's remarkable F1 debut amid usual Verstappen routine at 2024 Saudi Arabian GP

Max Verstappen made it nine race victories in succession, comfortably clear of team mate Sergio Perez who in turn had enough of a margin over Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari that he could overcome the 5sec penalty applied for an unsafe release from his pitstop. There were two remarkable things about this race. The first was the remarkable debut of 18-year-old Oliver Bearman standing in for Carlos Sainz at Ferrari while the latter was having his appendix removed. The second was just how uneventful the race was, in contrast to previous grands prix here. Low tyre deg and a safety car which brought most of the field in on the same lap was responsible for that.

Lap 7, Lance Stroll has crashed his Aston Martin, taken just a smidgeon too much track width on the entry to Turn 22 and snapped his left-hand track-rod, giving him no way of steering as he headed straight for a 100mph impact with the tyre barrier.

Lance was fine, but the broken car needed to be removed and hence the safety car came out. A decision was thus imposed on everyone: to stay out or come in. There were two components to this question:  1) Would getting straight onto the hards and therefore not exploiting the full benefit of the mediums (which would otherwise have been good for another 15-18 laps) and not optimally balancing the two stints lose you more race time than the 10sec you’d save by pitting under the safety car?  2) What would everyone else do and therefore how would your track position impact upon your time loss in traffic etc?

The second question of course is unanswerable in the moment and is in the realm of game theory. But almost everyone came in. Which had the effect of making that the better strategy, because to stay out when the tyre deg was so low meant you didn’t really have all that much of a tyre offset when you eventually rejoined. Also, with almost everyone coming in there was no traffic penalty delay for doing so. So the pack didn’t get mixed up. Only Lando Norris, Lewis Hamilton, Nico Hulkenberg and Zhou Guanyu stayed out, so as not to be stacked behind their-team mates in the pits. They all then ran very long, hoping for a late safety car which never came. Norris and Hamilton had been running sixth and eighth respectively before the safety car. They finished eighth and ninth, chasing down Bearman on tyres 30-odd laps older but not catching him before the flag.