Qatar race is always entertaining if you ask me, the track is one where many surprising things could happen. Usually there is no rain, I think this one will be a similar one as well so we should be seeing a Max win and nothing surprising there.
However, rest of the track is wide open and we do not know what's going to happen there, we all know Mclaren got better, and we know that Ferrari got better recently as well, and Mercedes is not all that bad neither, Aston Martin started well but I am not expecting Alonso to do all that well. In light of all these, I am sensing a Ferrari and McLaren podium as well, Perez will probably not do well so a Sainz and Piastri podium would not be impossible. Charles has been getting some unlucky results and for some reason Norris has been overperformed by Piastri as well.
For sure those 2nd Drivers from Ferrari and McLaren have shown some improvements that just that, well I really don't want to call them 2nd Driver because for sure some other teams tend to not call them that unlike RedBull It was pretty much obvious and Sergio Perez is the one that is not improving for sure while Carlos Saints and Oscar Piastri is showing great improvements indeed,
I do believe that this would be an interesting race for the drivers knowing that they have to make time and utilize their practice and analyze it so much to make up for the lack of data. I'm really interested to see the practice sessions of this race.
Surely this is going to be a great experience for some drivers and mostly the 1st time that are seeing this track, well there are a lot of Narrow corners that are impossible to pass on other drivers, for sure many will likely get a hard time on this one, and a possibility of rain could surely get some different vibe for this track for sure and as this Circuit is originally made for Moto GP in the 1st place,
There is a sprint race format so yeah with the difference in time zones get them in early. I did them a day after the last race.
Also with @owengtam09 and others such as yourselves talking about Perez.
He will be trying his damnedest to try and get more points since he is in second place at the drivers standing with 223 points and Hamilton 190 so he would want to make a good impression to his boss Horner so there won't be anymore talk about him being cast out of the team having the reason of him not being able to perform compared to Verstappen who has 400 points.
With 16/22 race weekends already having been done there is still time for even the likes of Alonso to catch up and make second place.
For sure Sergio Perez will try his best thing he can win this race as he is likely doing everything even the worst thing for a penalty just to win the race, for sure the only explanation I can get is why he is having a difficult time was the settings of the car were not meant for him but for Max Verstappen, he is not used in this kind of set-up for sure that is why he will certainly get different results, and for sure there is one set-up for each team just to not allocated a worst budget parts,