It was announced on Friday before practice one, that Sebastian Vettel would not be able to compete at this weekend’s Jeddah Grand Prix in Saudi Arabia due to Covid, meaning that once again, Nico Hülkenberg would take the vacant seat at Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team.
Hülkenberg recorded 23 laps in practice one with his best lap in the session being a 1:33.034. This left him in sixteenth place at the end of the first practice, which did leave a lot of room for improvement whilst keeping in mind that it is the first time that Hülkenberg has competed at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.
In practice two, the German completed 30 laps, with his fastest lap in the session being nearly a second and a half quicker than his first sessions best time with a 1:31.615. However the improvement in time was only good enough for a consistent sixteenth place in the the lap times.
Niko Hülkenberg spoke afterwards about his experience of driving on a new track for the first time and the challenges that come with it, with expectations from the team.
“I think it was a productive first day back in the car. It is a new circuit for me to learn, which always provides its own challenges, but it was an exciting experience out there. It is a very high-speed circuit and an intense lap, more so than it can appear on TV.
“The team completed its programme, we made good use of the laps, and I feel I learned as much as I could out on track”
Stroll – “We continue to learn how to optimise this car”
Lance Stroll headed into practice in Jeddah coming off of a twelfth place finish at Bahrain and narrowly missing out on the points after a disappointing display from the team which was helped out by the three retirements in the race.
In practice one, Stroll recorded 23 laps with his best lap time being a 1:32.582, leaving him in twelfth position at the end of the session with the hope of being able to break into the top ten.
In practice two, the Canadian completed 28 laps with his best lap time being nearly eight tenths of a second quicker than his fastest lap in practice one with a 1:31.372. With an improvement on his time in practice two just like his team-mate, Stroll ended the session two places lower than in practice one in fourteenth.
Lance Stroll spoke afterwards about the team trying new things out in both sessions to be more competitive and how analysing the performance of the car will put Aston Martin as a team in a better position for qualifying on Saturday.
“We completed plenty of laps today, tried some new things, and continue to learn how to optimise this car. First practice is not very representative here [being run in the daytime], but it is all useful data for the coming races.
“Every lap is helpful at this time of year. We continued to work on the balance of the car in second practice and did all the usual evaluation of the tyre compounds. We will crunch the info tonight to see where we can find more performance ahead of qualy.”
