2024 Saudi-Arabian GP

A tough evening in Jeddah saw George finish P6 and Lewis P9 at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Starting P7 and P8 on the Mediums, neither driver was able to make up ground off the line, before an early Safety Car brought many drivers in for an earlier-than-expected change of tyres.

George made the switch to Hard tyres, while Lewis stayed out – extending his stint.

From there, he was unable to hold off Perez and Leclerc on fresher tyres, but held off Piastri on new rubber until his pit stop on lap 37, when he was able to switch to the Soft compound for the short final stint.

When he emerged, he was unable to reel in the McLaren of Norris or Oliver Bearman’s Ferrari in P7, and was forced to settle for ninth.

In the closing stages, George put pressure on Alonso’s Aston Martin for P5, but was also unable to make a move.

After a hectic few weeks of testing and a double header to start the season, the team now return to Brackley to delve into all the data collected on W15, and begin the hard work to get ready for the Australian Grand Prix in two weeks’ time.

Lewis Hamilton

We tried our best to go long today and were hoping that we might benefit from a safety car or a VSC. Unfortunately it never came to us, and we ended up finishing slightly further back than we started. It was worth trying something different though. We gave it everything we had, and that was likely the best result we could get today given how the race played out.

There is potential within this car, but we still need to add a good amount of performance. The car today was pretty good in the medium and low-speed corners, but we were losing out in the high-speed. These next few races will be tricky but we will be putting in a great deal of effort to improve as much as we can. I know everyone at the factory will be getting their heads down and working as hard as they can.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We've not performed well this weekend. Our high-speed performance has been weak, and the car is bouncing in those corners. That contributed to our poor qualifying but also meant we couldn't challenge Aston Martin and the McLarens in the race. We were losing so much time in sector one that we spent the rest of the lap clawing it back.

Overall, it has been a very frustrating weekend but ultimately one of our own making. We've seen glimpses of strong performance, but it's not been easy to land the set-up in the right place and we've clearly got some weaknesses that still need ironing out. We are going to have to work hard between now and Melbourne to improve. The tracks are similar and we don’t want another weekend like this one.