Weug looking to put last year’s lessons into practice in Jeddah after topping Day 3 of testing

Maya Weug is assured that the tweaks she’s made since her visit to Jeddah last year should help her chances heading into Round 2, after the Ferrari driver ended the final day of in-season testing top of the timing sheets.

Finishing no lower than sixth across the three days of running, the Dutch racer also recorded the second-fastest time overall on Day 2, only 0.041s back from pace-setter Alisha Palmowski.

Acclimatising herself to the conditions she’ll face on the race weekend, Weug says that the tricky nature of the 27-corner circuit means success will depend on how well she can balance her performance.

“It's been positive,” she began. “We tried a lot of stuff, it's been really hot out here. It’s a really cool track and to get it right every time is impossible, but we will have to get as consistent as possible ahead of Qualifying next week.

“It's nice to drive in the night because it's a bit cooler and it looks cool as well from the outside. We still have some data to check and things to improve, but definitely a hot three days.”

Currently sitting second in the Standings, with one pole position and two podiums to her name, Weug recognises that testing times don’t automatically translate into race performance, but she already has a valuable insight into how her pace will evolve.

Recording P3 and P2 finishes on last year’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the Ferrari driver admitted that there were issues in her approach that she’s looked to address.

Weug ends Day 3 top of the timesheets in Jeddah in-season testing

“We have a good idea on how Shanghai went and what to expect after that,” she explained. “We know how the track evolves with F1. I've been here last year already so I have an advantage on top of the rookies to know what to expect from FP to Qualifying, which is nice."

Weug added: “There were a couple of things that, at the time, I didn’t want to accept last year that I was doing wrong. Working on the sim and so on, I realised that I had to improve those things. I think we managed to put them into reality on these days, so that feels good.”

When asked where improvements were still needed, she replied: “Our Quali pace was pretty good in Shanghai, so I wouldn't want to change much on that, but definitely our race pace and race starts. My race starts were something that we wanted to work on and we did a lot more race starts on these days, which I feel much more comfortable with. So, that's a good way to go into the race week.”