Charles Leclerc led the first free practice with a tenth of an advantage over Max Verstappen and the Ferrari is confirmed as a reference in a very fast circuit, Jeddah Corniche, in which the power units will make the difference. It is no coincidence that the third car on the time table is Valtteri Bottas’ Alfa Romeo the lightest on the grid with a Ferrari engine. Carlos Sainz, with the other F1-75, was fourth at three and a half tenths. The man from Madrid reported excessive ‘porpoising’ to his engineers while he did the fastest laps with the Pirelli soft tire. Adjusting the height and rebound of the cars is one of the priority tasks for all the teams this weekend.
Gasly and Tsunoda closed the top-6 with the two Alpha Tauri and also Checo came within a second of Gasly. It was not the case of the Mercedes, McLaren or Aston Martin. Between the absences, Magnussen had reliability problems and stopped the count in two laps without time.
Fernando Alonso, with the tenth fastest time, debuts engine. His team confirmed before starting practice that the power unit that the Asturian built in Bahrain had a small leak and has been sent to Paris to be checked, repaired and reused as the season progresses. It is not a great sign of reliability to resort to a second engine for the second race of the year. In any case, the Alpine is with Mercedes, which doesn’t sound too bad either.