What we learned from Friday practice at the 2024 F1 Abu Dhabi GP

As Max Verstappen has had the 2024 Formula 1 drivers’ championship sewn up for nearly two weeks, the only competitive interest in this Abu Dhabi season finale centres on which of McLaren or Ferrari will wrap up the constructors’ title.

That’s other than the early mind games shots of possible 2025 title contenders Verstappen and George Russell…

But in the much more meaningful fight, it’s firmly advantage McLaren – ahead by 21 points anyway – after two practice sessions from the Yas Marina track on Friday.

The story of the day

Once again here the opening practice session was dominated by rookies – with five newbies joining Liam Lawson (a special case in himself given his 2023 race appearances), Franco Colapinto and Jack Doohan (also with special circumstances) as the ‘regular’ first-timers.

The opening one-hour session was bittersweet for Ferrari, with Charles Leclerc leading the way with a 1m24.321s in the unrepresentative sunny running.

He got to join his brother on track for a slice of F1 world championship history as the first siblings to drive for the same team in a GP weekend session (Argentina 1971 and the Fittipaldi brothers turning out for Lotus not counting due its non-championship status).

But the elder Leclerc had missed the opening half of FP1 due to an issue with his car’s battery, with Ferrari swiftly revealing this had needed to be changed and so he will now have to take a 10-place grid drop for wherever he qualifies ahead of Sunday’s race. Already, it was advantage even further to McLaren in the constructors’ battle.

Looming engine penalty for Leclerc points to a tough challenge for Ferrari to snatch the constructors’ championship

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The orange team’s fortunes in the early exchange of this final scrap got even better when it dominated FP2, while Ferrari comparatively struggled – this as usual the only practice session that matters given its similar twilight setting to the race and night-time qualifying.

Norris led pretty much throughout in FP2 – bar a few seconds where he was headed by team-mate Oscar Piastri during their qualifying simulation efforts – and ended up top with a 1m23.517s.

Qatar winner Verstappen, meanwhile, struggled so badly with understeer on his Red Bull he trailed Sergio Perez on both one-lap and race pace.

The long-run race simulations that closed FP2 brought further good news for McLaren, as Piastri’s average laptime came in at 0.312s quicker than the best Ferrari could manage

At Ferrari, Leclerc’s FP2 qualifying simulation was spoiled by traffic on his first stab, with Carlos Sainz finishing fourth – 0.582s down on Norris and behind the interloping Nico Hulkenberg. Haas put its soon-to-be former driver’s high-profile result down to hitting the sweetspot on the tyre challenge here.

FP2 overall order

What the data tells us

The long-run race simulations that closed FP2 brought further good news for McLaren, as Piastri’s average lap time came in at 0.312s quicker than the best Ferrari could manage, courtesy of Leclerc. But of the four frontrunning teams, the chasing constructors’ championship challenger was eclipsed by its rivals at Red Bull and particularly Mercedes too.

McLaren also showed strong long-run pace on mediums during FP2

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As the table below shows, Lewis Hamilton led the way with an average of 1m29.505s, with Piastri 0.147s slower. Next up for Red Bull, Perez’s best (0.067s quicker on average than Verstappen managed on the same mediums as those also on the Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes cars) was 0.276s down on Hamilton.

In terms of stint lengths – where the usual FP2 caveats regarding fuel loads must be remembered for one final time this year – Red Bull and Ferrari did the longest to set those averages, with 12 and 13 each for Perez and Leclerc. Both Hamilton and Piastri were fuelled for at least the nine laps they completed in clocking those averages.

Medium long-run averages

Norris insists “I don’t think the others turned up their engines yet”, with the challenge as ever around the Yas Marina track to try and keep the softs in good shape for the tyre-torturing off-camber left-handers around the hotel in sector three.

So far, regardless of the classic FP2 engine mode settings caveat or not, it seems the MCL38 is coping with this challenge better than any of the rest.

“It might look glorious for now, but I think we’re still gonna have a tough fight tomorrow,” Norris added, relentlessly realistic as ever.

Given how it fired its rubber up so well in the cool Las Vegas conditions to dominate there, it’s hardly surprising to see Mercedes W15 struggle with this. Russell, on his qualifying simulation effort, was struggling to stay within track limits at the final corner as the softs cried enough.

Encouragingly for Red Bull, it’s worth remembering how it also started off the 2023 weekend here missing its desired balance sweetspot on the all-conquering RB19. In the end, Verstappen dominated the race to extend his winning streak here to four races since his walk-off Abu Dhabi win in 2020.

Keeping the softs alive for the final sector looked a tough ask for Mercedes

Photo by: Lubomir Asenov / Motorsport Images

As in Qatar, Red Bull insiders suggest it is currently struggling to find the RB20’s narrow best operating window with its early set-up choices on ride height level. That Verstappen is complaining so vocally about the front end suggests it’s also not just about hitting the tyre temperature window for the Dutchman’s squad. However, the team feels it has less work to do to improve its balance compared to a week ago.

“Just not connected balance from entry to mid corner,” Verstappen explained. “And that makes it then difficult to basically push. That’s something that we have to work on overnight.”

Ferrari, it seems, is also struggling so far with firing the softs up, rather than keeping them alive. Sainz claimed “we’re still not extracting all of the performance” as “always when the track drops in temperature and when we put the soft tyres on, our car seems to struggle a bit more”.

“McLaren has always been quick here in the past. It’s always been a track for McLaren but also, Lando has been very quick in Abu Dhabi before” Carlos Sainz

The overtaking challenge, at a time when there was no DRS, thwarted Ferrari in Fernando Alonso’s ambitions to win the drivers’ title here for the Scuderia 14 years ago – when his race engineer was Andrea Stella, who is now McLaren team principal.

And if it fails to head McLaren in qualifying – with Leclerc’s battery-change grid penalty piling on the pressure – it will look like an extremely long shot for a first championship of any kind for Ferrari since 2008. No wonder its mood so far is downbeat, with McLaren seemingly on course to claim its first constructors’ crown since 1998.

“McLaren has always been quick here in the past,” concluded Sainz. “It’s always been a track for McLaren but also, Lando has been very quick in Abu Dhabi before.

“I think they’re always going to be a difficult team to beat at the moment, [but] they look the strongest this weekend. So, it’s gonna be a tough ask to beat them.”

Can Ferrari turn the tables on McLaren in qualifying to give itself half a chance?

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images