2024 Qatar Grand Prix Debrief

Lessons Learned from the Desert Challenge

There’s

theme

running

through

this

final

triple-header

the

season

that

all

three

Grands

Prix

take

place

night

desert

setting.

You’d

forgiven

for

not

noticing

you

were

the

Mojave

Desert

last

week

with

the

bright

lights-big-city

vibe

Las

Vegas.

But

there’s

mistaking

the

sandy

backdrop

the

Lusail

Circuit,

state

the

art

facility

the

outskirts

Qatar’s

second

biggest

city.

Last year’s Qatar Grand Prix had thrown up two serious problems: temperatures were so high that even the drivers were feeling ill in the cockpit during the race and pyramid-shaped kerbs were destroying tyres, leading to an 18-lap maximum being imposed for each set. For this year, the former problem was fixed by moving the race to later in the year and the latter issue was dealt with by modifying the kerbs.

Braking in the Shadows

This was the final Sprint weekend of the year with all that entails – just one hour of free practice followed by pretty much nonstop action over the three days. Friday’s track time produced mixed results, with Yuki a very fast fifth overall in free practice, a performance he couldn’t repeat in Sprint Qualifying, not making the cut to SQ2 so that he would line up 17th for the following day’s short race. Liam fared better, qualifying tenth, which could have been ninth, but for a deleted time for exceeding track limits.

In Saturday’s Sprint race, Liam’s chances of moving up two places to eighth to score a point went out the window when he ran wide off the track, losing time and damaging the floor of his car. Yuki finished where he started. They say be careful what you wish for and, while last year, dealing with the heat was difficult, twelve months later in much cooler conditions getting the obligatory for Q1 and Q2 Medium compound tyres up to temperature was proving problematic. Liam ended up 17th fastest, while Yuki made it through to Q2 to secure 14th place on the grid.

2024 Qatar Grand Prix Race

The penultimate race of the year got off to an encouraging start for us, with Yuki once again demonstrating his quick reactions and moving up four places on the opening lap, but Liam was almost immediately on the backfoot, spinning while trying to pass Valtteri Bottas at the restart after the first Safety Car. However, as seen in the previous day’s Sprint, the VCARB-01 simply didn’t have the pace and although we tried to fight back with our strategy choices, even briefly running the softest compound tyre, in the end we just weren’t competitive enough, Yuki finishing 13th, one place ahead of Liam.

The Yas Marina Circuit which hosts this Sunday’s season finale in Abu Dhabi, should suit our car better and the fact that Yuki qualified sixth and finished eighth there last year is cause for optimism. Yes, our target of finishing sixth in the Constructors’ now looks much harder to hit, but that won’t affect how we tackle the 24th and last race of the year. We will be giving it our all as usual.

Racer's Focus