ANALYSIS: Mercedes emerge as the aerodynamically most efficient car in Qatar

Following their double victory at last weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, Mercedes have emerged as the aerodynamically most efficient car in Qatar – at least when it came to a single-lap performance. F1Technical’s senior writer Balazs Szabo delivers his latest analysis.

McLaren were favourites heading into the Qatar F1 weekend, and the Woking-based outfit delivered when it really mattered, with Lando Norris securing pole position in sprint qualifying

The Briton led the way through all three segments of Sprint Qualifying beneath the lights at Lusail on Friday evening, while George Russell elbowed Oscar Piastri out of second on his final flying lap, narrowly denying the title-chasing team a front-row lockout.

Ferrari drivers looked quick in the sole one-hour practice, but Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc only ended up fourth and fifth on the grid for today’s F1 Qatar Sprint, with newly-crowned four-time F1 champion Max Verstappen grabbing P6.

Lewis Hamilton was content with the long-run pace of his W15, but he struggled for one-lap pace, and took only seventh for the sixth and final sprint race of the season.

After last weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, Formula One returned to action this weekend, with Qatar staging the middle station of the last triple header of this longest ever Formula 1 season.

Although both the Las Vegas and the Qatar F1 races are night races, the distance between the two locations is eye-catching: 13,000 kilometres as the crow flies and an eleven-hour time difference separate Doha from Las Vegas.

The Qatar Grand Prix was first held in the coronavirus-affected 2021 F1 season, with a permanent circuit playing host to the F1 action.

The Lusail International Circuit features medium-high speed corners where the tyres are subjected to energy levels comparable to those at Suzuka and Silverstone and so the hardest trio of compounds in the 2024 range will be used, with the C3 as Soft, the C2 as Medium and the C1 as Hard.

It is therefore no surprise that all teams have opted to use a high-downforce configuration this weekend after running very low aerodynamic packages at last weekend’s Navadan round.

McLaren have so far lived up to expectations by dominating the sprint qualifying session yesterday. The MCL38 excelled in the long-radius medium-speed corners of the first and second sector, but produced the lowest top speed in the entire field which suggests that McLaren went for the highest downforce package.

Mercedes turned out to be the closest challenger to McLaren in qualifying, with the German outfit electing for a slightly different configuration. The W15 produced higher top-end speed, which saw Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell gain around two tenths of a second over McLaren on the straights.

Interestingly, Mercedes were very quick through the high-speed corner, as well, and lost only a tiny bit in the single slow speed corner. In turn, the W15 lost around three tenths in the medium-speed turns compared to the MCL60.

Ferrari and Red Bull went a package that focuses more on straight-line speed, with both the RB20 and the SF-24 achieving significantly higher top speed than the MCL38. However, it is where the similarities between Red Bull and Ferrari end.

There are big differences between the way the two cars produce their lap times. The RB20 and the SF24 hardly lose anything to MCL38 in the sole slow-speed corner, albeit the Red Bull is only fractionally better down the straights than the McLaren while Ferrari find a relatively big chunk of time.

In turn, Red Bull is brilliant through the high-speed corners, emerging as the fastest car while Ferrari struggle to keep up with its three direct rivals in the high-speed turns.

When it comes to the medium-speed corners, Ferrari and Red Bull lose a lot, with both the Italian and the Austro-British team having complained about lack of front-end grip after the sprint qualifying.