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Formula 1 is full of complex lingo and circuit-specific narratives that can confuse and baffle the occasional viewer or new fan. Why is the Hungarian Grand Prix known for its quali bias? What makes the Singapore Grand Prix the most physically challenging race? And why do teams take different rear wings for the Monaco Grand Prix?

With 23 circuits, there can be a lot to take in, so weve organised for you to join us in Lando and Oscars engineering briefings, where well walk you through this weekends key trackside topics so that you can enjoy the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix to its fullest.

Oscars Race Engineer Tom Stallard is leading this weekends engineering briefing. The Jeddah Corniche Circuit is part of a new breed of street circuit, much faster and wider than the likes of Monaco. Tom will explore the differences between Jeddah and other street tracks, explain why weve brought a different rear wing and discuss what we can expect from a strategy perspective this weekend.

Time to begin. Grab a coffee and follow us through the glass doors and into the Paddock Performance Centre. Take notes if you need them, but please keep them to yourself.

Engineer: Tom StallardEvent: Saudi Arabian Grand PrixCircuit: Jeddah Corniche Circuit

Usually, for a street circuit, we would be cautious at the start of the weekend, perhaps running the car a little softer to give the drivers an easier intro. That isnt really the case here. This is more like a permanent circuit: the asphalt works like a permanent track and there arent the bumps that you see in places like Monaco and Singapore.

Those bumps are why you might modify a car for a street circuit but for somewhere as smooth as this, there isnt the need to deviate from where you want to go with the set-up.

The circuit in Jeddah this weekend has changed a bit. Some of the walls have moved: the final chicane has been tweaked, and the apex speed there will be lower and a gear down, and the bolted metal kerbs have been replaced with concrete, filled with asphalt behind, designed to prevent the skateboard-style of accident. Theres plenty to learn today.

The key thing here is those big walls in the exit in lots of places. A little bit like Baku, its important to be really accurate with the initial turn-in. The drivers need to brake really well, and the first movement of the car is critical because once you do that, the die is cast.

Judging that braking point right makes you massively quicker than someone who undercooks it, and can never get the time back, or leaves it too late and has to lift to avoid a wall. For the drivers, getting confidence from the laps in practice is vital.

Tyres are a big issue in Jeddah. We have the same compounds as last year. Were expecting graining, and for that graining to be pretty terrible in FP1 but improving over the weekend as the track rubbers in. The question to answer is how much better its going to get thats what well be trying to predict.

Last year, the graining was very bad on Friday so bad everyone only carried four sets of Soft tyres into qualifying, to have one extra set of the harder compounds available for the race and then most cars were able to one-stop in the race because the tyres improved a lot.

Our challenge on Friday is to identify early enough whether were going to see the same track evolution this year, and the same improvement in tyre performance.

This really is something we have to study here. The references from Bahrain, in the test and grand prix, arent really helpful. The asphalt here is very smooth, with a very low macro-roughness, which puts much less stress on the tyres its very much the opposite end of the range to Bahrain. Difficult to imagine consecutive races so different.

Well be running a different rear wing in Jeddah to the one we had in Bahrain. Its a step lower in the downforce range to better suit this circuit, and well be using it on both cars from the start of FP1. Its a new rear wing so well be studying it expect to see some flo-vis and want to sign it off.

Wed expect to run it all weekend but that will depend on whether we see what were expecting in terms of grip levels, track temperatures, our performance through the speed traps versus other cars, and so on.

Preparing for quali will be interesting too because last year there wasnt really consensus. Getting the Soft tyre to work on the first timed lap was not straightforward. It seemed to get quicker and quicker through a run in practice, and even as late as Q3, there was a 50-50 split between cars that did a first timed, and those who did a warm-up.

Wed like to have a better idea of which approach is going to work best first-timed or warm-up lap: how the track changes according to temperature, what happens with a little bit of track evolution and how best to prepare on the out-lap. Our quali-sims will be very important for finding more information.

Briefing complete. Time for Lando and Oscar to head out onto the track so we can collect some data and put our hard work to the test.

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