Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

Arabian nightsArabian nights

The season's first triple-header concludes with a 1,300km hop from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia and the Jeddah Corniche Circuit – the fastest street track in the world.

Jeddah runs Monza close for the fastest average speed of any F1 circuit, but what Monza doesn't have is the close walls and limited sightlines that make the circuit in the ancient port city a breathless exercise under the lights.

LanceStroll

16th

RACE POSITION

10th

DRIVER STANDING

Lance's profile

FernandoAlonso

11th

RACE POSITION

17th

DRIVER STANDING

Fernando's profile

Saudi Arabian Grand Prix race stats

Number of pitstops

Longest stint (laps)

Total laps

308.7

Total kilometres

LanceStroll

P16

Final position

P16

Starting position

Points

FernandoAlonso

P11

Final position

P13

Starting position

Points

Fastest lapM:S.MS

1:32.745

Lance

1:33.009

Fernando

Max speedKM/H

330.6

Lance

339.4

Fernando

Practice laps

Lance

Fernando

Qualifying laps

Lance

Fernando

Race laps

Lance

Fernando

Total laps

119

Lance

125

Fernando

Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

The Debrief by Aramco

Racing along the corniche. Get the debrief on the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

TRACK INSIGHTS

Jeddah Corniche CircuitJeddah Corniche Circuit

Jeddah is a very high-speed circuit. It's a street circuit, as well, so you're surrounded by walls, so it's important to have a good feeling for the track.

Tina Hausmann – F1 Academy Driver

Toggle below to highlight parts of the track.

Sectors
Turns
DRS

Circuit length
6.174km
Number of corners
27
Race distance
308.450km

NEED TO KNOW: SAUDI ARABIAN GP

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The essential Saudi Arabia travel guide with Regent Seven Seas Cruises

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Mastering Jeddah Corniche Circuit

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The magic of racing in Jeddah

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Strategy insights from Saudi Arabia

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Ultimate Saudi Arabian Grand Prix facts

Last time out

The essential Saudi Arabia travel guide with Regent Seven Seas Cruises

Drive from the airport to the Corniche, and you'll see a lot of cranes: Jeddah is a city undergoing a transformation. While Saudi's second city is also its commercial hub, much of the recent development focusses on tourism: the Corniche circuit itself is, of course, emblematic of that but also new museums, malls and hotels are springing up at a rapid rate. This is, however, an ancient port city, gateway to Arabia for thousands of years, and, as much, it’s the water that draws the attention.

In common with many places on the Arabian Peninsula, a few kilometres out of town, Jeddah can supply excellent motorsports adventures – but if dune buggies and 4x4s aren't your thing, then before going to the track in the evening, the clear blue waters of the Red Sea are at hand. The full range of diving opportunities are within easy reach, from wrecks to reefs to walls and pinnacles, and if the deep doesn't appeal, the shallows provide excellent snorkelling and an abundance of marine life.

Set sail: Explore Saudi Arabia with Regent Seven Seas Cruises.

Mastering Jeddah Corniche Circuit

In a very short period, The Jeddah Corniche Circuit has established an identity for itself quite apart from the mainstream. It's a street circuit lacking the usual street-circuit tropes. It has ultra high-speeds; it has banking; it doesn't have a preponderance of second-gear, 90° corners. It does have the ever-present drama of barriers to be brushed by cars on a flying lap – but it isn't a circuit where Qualifying position dominates. This is a track layout for racing: multiple overtaking opportunities on every lap – but also a heavy price to pay for the overly ambitious. It makes the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix a mesmerising race to watch, and one where fortunes can be transformed in an instant.

The track is a long, narrow ribbon, reminiscent of a longer, faster Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montréal, with the city to the east, the Red Sea to the west, and a lagoon separating the start-finish straight from the back-straight. Following the Turns 1-2 Chicane, the anti-clockwise lap features a high-speed, rapid-change of direction sequence of linked corners on the run up to 12° banked, parabolic T13, where the track turns back on itself, heading back down the coast along an ultra-high speed pair of full-throttle sections separated by a chicane. While not 'straight' in the geometric sense, the curvature on this section of track is sufficiently shallow for both to be DRS zones.

Turn 27, the final corner, is also slightly banked, giving onto the start-finish straight, which is the longest of the three DRS sectors and, heading towards the lowest-speed corner on the track at Turn One, is the prime overtaking spot. It's an intriguing track layout with an unusual amount of positional chess played, with cars often unwilling to take the lead on the back-straight, preferring to get DRS onto the front-straight, so to take the lead into the chicane and have 17 corners to pull clear before reaching the next DRS detection point.

The magic of racing in Jeddah

Following the old-school layouts of Suzuka and Sakhir, the Jeddah Corniche Circuit is quite a step change. The Saudi Arabia Grand Prix combines high-speed corners with street circuit walls – a combination not often seen in Formula One, and one which in the short history of the Jeddah Corniche Circuit has never failed to provide the full spectrum of night race drama – which, of course, is what it's been designed to do.

The Corniche Circuit, as the name suggests, faces the Red Sea, with the grandstands clustered on the landward side of the long, narrow track, with most offering views over several section of the circuit. History suggests much of the action happens at the first chicane. Main Grandstand B overlooks this – while also having a view of the starting grid and into the pit-lane.

This is billed as a night race, but the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix has a busy calendar with both Formula 2 and the F1 Academy on the bill. So, for those brave enough to brave the midday sun, and wanting to cheer on Jak and Tina, the track action begins at lunchtime and goes through until 10:30pm. If you want to pack a lot into a day at the race track, this is the place to do it.

Strategy insights from Saudi Arabia

We've had four races in Jeddah and, so far, every one of them has been won with a Medium-Hard one-stop strategy. In fact, so unpopular has the Soft tyre been, it's raced only 101 laps out of the roughly 4,000 completed. This may, however, be about to change with Jeddah being the first race of 2025 at which Pirelli have moved away from its 2024 compound choices, going a step softer to the C3, C4, C5 tyres. Looking at previous races, the C4-C3 combination still has the range for a one-stop strategy, but the two-stop will now also be in play.

Quite what the ideal strategy has been in previous years is tough to say, given each race has been affected by Safety Cars. The speeds and proximity of walls make it among the most likely places to see the race interrupted.

While the change increases the variety of options available for the race, it may make Qualifying a little more predictable. In previous years, getting the tyres into the temperature window in Jeddah has been tricky, with cars frequently doing warm-up laps and two, sometimes three attempts. That's made the sessions extremely volatile – but with the C5 compound on offer, things should be more straightforward this year.

Ultimate Saudi Arabian Grand Prix facts

1 | With 27 corners, Jeddah has the most turns of any track in F1. It does, however, have only seven braking points – two heavy, two medium, three light, and only around 15 per cent of the lap is spent on the brakes.

2 | At 6.174km, the Jeddah Corniche Circuit is the third-longest in F1. Only the Las Vegas Strip Circuit and the mighty Spa-Francorchamps are longer.

3 | Fernando's third place here in 2023 was his 100th F1 podium. He currently sits on 106, fifth-equal on the all-time list with Alain Prost.

4 | There were just 112 days between the first and second Saudi Arabian Grands Prix, beating by a week the record previously held by the Australian Grand Prix (though during Covid, the Red Bull Ring, Silverstone and the Bahrain International Circuit all held back-to-back races, albeit races with different names).

5 | This isn't a track to deliver a lot of action in the pit lane. Across four years there have been only 64 pitstops – that's four-fifths of a stop per driver.

Last time out

Arriving in Jeddah for the first time, the concerns of the teams centred around the newness of the tarmac and the limitations of the sightlines. The former ceased to be a factor once the cars got out on track and Jeddah proved to offer plenty of grip, but the latter delivered a weekend as fraught as predicted, culminating in a race that featured two Safety Cars, two red flags and three VSCs. It was a rough race for both of our cars, with Lance finishing P11 and Seb retiring the AMR21 with accident damage. Both drivers made spritely starts from row nine, though Lance lost out badly with the original red flag, having pulled the trigger on his pitstop while the track was still green. Seb prospered, however, and had made his way from P17 to P8 by mid-race. A collision with Yuki Tsunoda, however, dropped him out of the points, and then another collision with Kimi Räikkönen ended his race.

2022 did not go any better. Seb missed the race completing his Covid quarantine and so Nico Hülkenberg subbed for his countryman. He finished P12 and Lance P13 which, in a race of high attrition, were the final two cars to take the flag. In Lance's case, he must have had a strong sense of déjà vu, once again making his pitstop shortly before a Safety Car gave his rivals a free stop. Nico went the other way, starting on a Hard tyre and staying out at the first Safety Car to move up into the points, hoping for more mayhem later in the race. While it came, it came a little too late for him to make use of.

Things have improved in recent times, with Fernando showing a particular liking for the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. In 2023, he started in P2 but took the lead at the start. It looked even better, with Lance moving up to P4 but then things went a little backwards with Lance retiring with an engine issue, while Fernando drove a canny race to defend where he could against quicker cars but not lose time against the inevitable, ultimately finishing P3.

Last year, the AMR24 wasn't quite as competitive as its predecessor, but both drivers made it through to Q3 and started in the top ten. Lance had a promising start but his race ended after brushing a barrier. Fernando used the ensuing Safety Car to make his only stop of the race and bring it home an excellent P5, our best finish of the season.

Free Practice 1

Fri 18 APRIL14:30–15:30 BST

14:30–15:30 BST

Free Practice 2

Fri 18 APRIL18:00–19:00 BST

18:00–19:00 BST

Free Practice 3

Sat 19 APRIL14:30–15:30 BST

14:30–15:30 BST

Qualifying

Sat 19 APRIL18:00–19:00 BST

18:00–19:00 BST

Race

Sun 20 APRIL18:00 BST

18:00 BST

Talking Points

Commercial growth, thriving partnerships

Ahead of lights out in Jeddah, Jefferson Slack, Managing Director, Commercial and Marketing, brings us up to speed with how our commercial performance continues to go from strength to strength, including topics such as Aston Martin Lagonda's recent sale of their stake in the team and our partnerships with Aramco and Maaden.

F1 ACADEMY

A beginner's guide

Aston Martin Aramco F1 ACADEMY driver Tina Hausmann continues in the ultra-competitive, all-female, single-seater series this season. Here's your essential guide to F1 ACADEMY in 2025.