Jeddah Corniche Circuit · Jeddah
50 laps · 6.174 km per lap · Pirelli C2 Hard / C3 Medium / C4 Soft
Jeddah Corniche Circuit is a bonus circuit not on the 2026 calendar — the 2026 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was cancelled. Run along the Red Sea coastline at night, it is one of the fastest street circuits F1 has raced on. Cars carry enormous speed through a sequence of blind, walled-in corners that leave almost no margin for error, making it one of the most demanding circuits anywhere for driver confidence and precision.
Despite the intimidating walls and high speeds, the smooth, modern asphalt and relatively gentle cornering loads keep tyre degradation surprisingly low for a street circuit — Jeddah behaves more like a purpose-built power circuit than a typical narrow street layout.
The combination of very high average speed and a long lap gives Jeddah one of the shorter race durations by lap count on the calendar, despite covering a full race distance, and its width by street-circuit standards supports a solidly above-average overtaking score.
Pirelli nominates the C2 Hard, C3 Medium and C4 Soft for Jeddah — the same trio used at Baku, another fast, low-degradation street circuit. With wear this low, compound choice matters more for Safety Car timing than pure survival.
Low degradation makes the Hard an easy tyre to run deep into a stint, giving strategic flexibility around any Safety Car periods without forcing an early stop.
The most common starting tyre for drivers outside the top ten, offering a small pace edge over the Hard without sacrificing much of Jeddah's already-mild degradation.
Q3 runners start on the Soft. Given how blind and unforgiving the walls are here, a mistake on any compound can end a race instantly — precision matters as much as tyre choice.
Jeddah's blind, high-speed corners with minimal run-off mean the circuit punishes even small errors severely, which historically has produced a higher-than-average Safety Car rate — a single mistake against these walls tends to bring out a full course caution rather than a local yellow flag.
This makes flexibility around Safety Car timing genuinely valuable, similar to other high-speed street circuits. Teams that can react quickly to an unplanned caution period often gain more than any pre-planned strategy could deliver on its own.
The default plan given Jeddah's mild degradation: run the Medium into the pit window, switch to the Hard, and cover the rest of the race with margin for a Safety Car restart.
For Q3 runners on the Soft. A short first stint uses the Soft's pace before switching to the Hard for a long second stint with plenty of margin.
Given Jeddah's above-average Safety Car rate, many strategies keep the pit window flexible enough to convert a caution into a near-free stop rather than committing to a fixed lap.
The long main straight is Jeddah's clearest deployment zone, and with the circuit's overall high average speed, drivers spend a larger share of the lap at or near full power than at most circuits.
Harvesting opportunities are more limited here given how few hard braking zones the lap contains, making disciplined energy management important to arrive at the main straight with enough charge for a full-power run.
A one-stop is 11.5 s faster than the best two-stop in clean air.
One-stop pit window: lap 18–27 of 50
Single car, no traffic, track position or Safety Car — so PITWALL shows stop count and timing but no compound order: in 2026 the model prefers finishing on softs, while teams mostly ran medium → hard. Model circuit-1. How the model is calibrated →
Build your strategy for Jeddah in PITWALL. Master the blind, high-speed corners and see if you can time a Safety Car as well as the field.
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