Qatar Grand Prix

Intensity in the desertIntensity in the desert

In the penultimate race of the season, Fernando finished inside the top ten and claimed six points, crucially moving the team up to seventh in the Constructors' Championship. Keep reading to get our team's thoughts.

Lance and Fernando both began the 57-lap race on the Medium tyre. Starting from P8, Fernando gained two positions to bring him up to P6 by the end of the opening lap.
A Safety Car on Lap 7 enabled our team to pit both drivers for fresh sets of Mediums. When racing got back underway, Fernando and Lance were running in P6 and P16 respectively.
At the end of Lap 24, Lance made his second pitstop for new Mediums. However, he acquired a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pitlane.
Eight laps later, Fernando came into the pits for C1s – this weekend's Hard compound.
Lance served his penalty when he pitted again on Lap 50 and switched to Softs for the final seven laps.
After claiming two points in yesterday's Sprint, Fernando added six more valuable points to his tally when he finished the Qatar Grand Prix in P7.
Next weekend, it's time of the final race of the season – a sunset showdown at Yas Marina to determine the winner of the Drivers' Championship. Lights out for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix takes place at 13:00 GMT on 7 December.

THE LATEST FROM THE TRACK

All corners, all the time

22 down, two to go. The F1 season started in the Gulf with winter testing and it's ending here as well, with the second and third legs of our final triple-header being the penultimate round in Qatar and then the season finale at Yas Marina.

We're back on the alternative programme at Lusail for the final Sprint weekend of the season – and also have some unusual local rules for the Grand Prix that's going to make Sunday just as fast as Saturday, while producing a few headaches for strategists and race engineers.

Qatar is an opportunity to bounce back after failing to score last time out in Vegas. Lance was unlucky to be out at the first corner and Fernando struggled for pace, eventually tumbling out of the points after a very promising performance in wet Qualifying.

We also have Jak Crawford in action, with F2 back on the programme this weekend. Currently second in the F2 standings, and coming off a fantastic feature victory in Baku, he's got a clear target this weekend, before doubling up in Abu Dhabi with F1 and F2 sessions at Yas Marina.

Keep scrolling for your guide to one of the most demanding weekends in F1, including an exclusive interview with Lance on how he's gearing up for the weekend.

TRACK INSIGHTS

Lusail International CircuitLusail International Circuit

Qatar is a combination of speed and intensity. There aren't many slow corners; it's all medium- and high-speed, with big lateral g-loads.
Lance Stroll

Toggle below to highlight parts of the track.

Sectors
Turns
DRS

Circuit length (km)
5.419
Number of corners
16
Race distance (km)
308.611

NEED TO KNOW: QATAR GP

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Mastering Lusail International Circuit

The magic of racing in Qatar

Strategy insights from Qatar

Ultimate Qatar Grand Prix facts

Last time out

The essential Qatar travel guide with Regent Seven Seas Cruises

Following hard on the heels of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Qatar is quieter by comparison, but no less busy for the team. For anyone coming to Qatar to watch the race, the country can be as action-packed or calmly reflective as you want.

Lusail itself is a designed place rather than an organic centre. Qatar has made big strides to target tourism in recent years, and a lot of that is centred around the smart city of Lusail. The circuit is at the northern end of the development, but go a few kilometres to the south, and there's an array of leisure facilities and plenty of surprising architecture. For sports fans, the Norman Foster-designed Lusail Stadium, is worth a look. The 86,000-seater arena hosted the 2022 World Cup final.

If the track has provided sufficient sporting content, Lusail also features a long Marina Promenade, leading to the highly-descriptive Lusail Marina Food Arena. It offers plenty of fine-dining with views of the yachts in the harbour, but also coffee shops and food trucks for those keen to sample the foodie vibe but in more of a hurry. There's also an impressive water park to keep the younger fans entertained.

Go a little further afield and Qatar will keep you entertained with the sort of thing you expect to see in a Gulf state… but also things that you don't. Go north of Lusail to Al Khor, and you can kayak through sleepy mangrove forests, and of course you can see plenty of towering and impressive dunes… but go south to Khor Al Adaid, and you can see them from the shores of an inland sea… which you probably weren't expecting.

Mastering Lusail International Circuit

Lusail is probably F1's most extreme circuit. It's a high-speed sequence of loops that just keep coming. It's a race for high-downforce wings and a very stiff car, but the wildcard is often the wind direction. The circuit is very exposed, and when the wind blows – particularly when gusty and particularly in corners with a crosswind, it's very difficult for the drivers to keep the car pointing in the right direction.

This is highly problematic, given the drivers are always struggling to keep their tyre temperatures under control given the high lateral energy of the fast corners, and the very hot track surface. Slipping and sliding in a gusty wind tends to create the sort of temperature spikes with which the car simply cannot live.

The main area of fan interest is likely to be the first corner sequence. The main straight is the only DRS zone and it feeds into a left-right-left combination that is… dramatic. Overtaking is possible inside or outside but it offers opportunities for a robust defence, that history suggests may end with wheel banging and debris on track.

The area holding most interest for teams, however, is the long right-hand corner of T12-T14. It's brutally quick, and while the kerbs are less aggressive than the ones that caused issue in 2023, it's a sequence that puts tyres on the limit. It's an interesting challenge for Qualifying: cars can push at the start of the lap or at the end of the lap, but not both. This is where you find out who's being a bit too greedy. We talk about this as being 'challenging' and 'difficult' but in reality, this is the sort of layout that shows-off F1 cars at their very best. It's what they were made to do.

The magic of racing in Qatar

Very similar to the Bahrain International Circuit, the grandstands at Lusail stretch from the final corner, along the main straight and through the first complex of turns. The Fan Zone and the various forms of non-race entertainment on offer are clustered behind the main grandstand – but if it's the racing you're interested in, then you have to roam a little further afield.

The high-speed loops of Lusail are great for watching F1 cars on the ragged edge – but it isn't really the sort of place that's going to provide much in the way of wheel-to-wheel action. Most of that happens between T1 and T3 in the right-left-right switchbacks at end of the main straight and single DRS zone.

The T2 grandstand is a good place to see it all happening – but it relies on a bit of luck. The grandstand is chevron shaped: the first half looking back on T1, the second forward to T3. You can move about here though, and see a bit of both.

The General Admission area on the other side of the track is pretty good too: you won't have a seat but the tiered Lusail Hill offers a really nice view… and given this is a night race and it isn't going to rain, the lack of a roof isn't a problem.

Strategy insights from Qatar

Last year's race was largely a one-stop affair with most cars running a Medium-Hard race. The Medium tyres had a wide pit window, with some cars stopping as early as lap 23 of the 57-lap race, and others extending to a lap 35 Safety Car.

This extension has Pirelli somewhat concerned, and thus we have a set of local rules for this race, announced last week. No tyre can do more than 25 laps. This does include laps behind the Safety Car, but does not include laps to the grid or laps after the chequered flag in sessions for grid practice.

What does this mean for the race? Well, given it's a 57-lap race, drivers can't do a one-stop, but the allowance of 25 laps per set creates a fair amount of wiggle-room around which two-stop will work best. Based on last year's stints, all three compounds are in play… but the Sprint weekend format will require a little bit of management. 25 laps is not an arbitrary number: it will allow a car to do six laps in SQ1 or SQ2 on a Medium, and then reuse that tyre for the full Sprint distance, or for a 19-lap burst – one-third race distance – in the grand prix. Extending that stint a few laps to leave a shorter Soft stint, however, will require retaining a pristine set of new Mediums – which isn't always the way teams like to approach a Sprint weekend.

Ultimate Qatar Grand Prix facts

1 | This is the fourth Qatar Grand Prix, all of which have been held at the Lusail Circuit. The race was introduced in 2021, skipped 2022 while the country was hosting the World Cup and returned in 2023. It has always been a night race.

2 | The original race, in 2021, was officially a replacement for the cancelled Australian Grand Prix. The Australian Grand Prix was slated to be the season-opener on March 21. It was postponed in response to Covid measures and rescheduled for November 21st. In July, it was officially cancelled, and the race in Qatar was announced in October.

3 | When the race returned for 2023, it did so at a track with a new pit lane, a new pit building, and, a track lengthened by 39m after some of the kerbs had been reprofiled, shifting the centreline.

4 | The circuit opened in 2004 and has gained international recognition as a regular host of MotoGP, with a Honda-powered Sete Gibernau winning the inaugural 2004 Qatar Motorcycle Grand Prix. The big impact, however, was when Lusail become the proof-of-concept circuit for night racing, with the 2008 Qatar GP being the first held under lights – six months before F1 did the same in Singapore.

5 | In 2023, Race Control added an extra, short, practice session to Saturday's programme, allowing drivers to familiarise themselves with changes to the high-speed T12-T14 section. This was the first time F1 has held six sessions on a race weekend since the deletion of the Sunday morning warm-up all the way back in 2003.

6 | Fernando has a good qualifying record here. He has never started outside the top eight in Qatar.

Last time out

Our three visits to Qatar have all proved fruitful, with the team always coming away with points. In 2021, Sebastian Vettel started and finished tenth on a Soft-Medium one-stop, but Lance made hay with the harder compounds, climbing from 12th on the grid to P6 with a very effective strategy. The race featured numerous punctures, however, establishing the legend of Lusail being a track that took tyres to the limit.

2023 was challenging. The race was held unusually early in the autumn, in very high temperatures. Fernando grabbed a point in the Sprint and qualified fourth for the grand prix… but the issue dominating proceedings was the tyres, and the threat of failures. It led the FIA to impose 18-lap limits for the race, which functionally meant everyone needing to do a three-stop race. The extra stops made for a flat-out race, which, combined with the high ambient temperatures, led to exhaustion for many of the drivers. Lance finished P9 but a track limits penalty pushed him down to P11. Fernando, however, came home P6.

Last year saw Lance's race over almost before it had begun, with a first lap collision leading to his retirement a few laps later. Fernando, however, kept our Qatar points run going, rising from P8 on the grid to P7 at the flag. The race was again highly attritional, with drivers suffering debris-induced punctures on old tyres – something which has induced changes for 2025.

Session Times

FP1

Fri28NOV

13:30-14:30 GMT

Fri28NOV

17:30-18:14 GMT

SPR

Sat29NOV

14:00-15:00 GMT

Quali

Sat29NOV

18:00-19:00 GMT

Race

Sun30NOV

16:00 GMT

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Qatar Grand Prix

Intensity in the desertIntensity in the desert

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All corners, all the time

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Lance Stroll on the resilience required in Qatar

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TRACK INSIGHTS

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