Saudi Arabian Grand Prix: Perez on pole

Clearly. Dry. Air +26C, rail +32C

The starting position in Jeddah is not fundamental – on the track you can overtake, but qualifying always proves interesting. On a tight, fast city circuit with many blind corners, the drivers actively attack to show good lap times, adding a lot of intrigue, although this time there were no incidents during practice.

However, there was no intrigue in the free races – Max Verstappen showed the best time in every session, surpassing last year’s results, but qualifying for the reigning world champion ended in retirement.

Pirelli brought to the stage the “middle” trio of compositions – C2, C3 and C4 in the role of Hard, Medium and Soft. In qualifying, the drivers used only the softest tyres, which gave them a speed advantage.

Charles Leclerc started the session knowing that he would lose ten places at the start – already in the second Grand Prix he received the third block of control electronics, two of which were allowed for the season.

In the first session in the first minutes, Nick de Vries was off track – he missed the third practice due to the power plant replacement, wrecked a set of tires, but avoided contact with the barrier. Norris hit the wall with his left front wheel and returned to the pits to check on the car.

Alonso spun on the exit of the second corner – without consequences. Yellow flags appeared at the end of the session – after a spectacular corner, Sargent stopped at turn 23, was able to continue, then made another mistake on the circle, again causing yellow flags and failing to meet the leader 107% of the time .

Verstappen showed the best time with a lap time of 1:28.761. Tsunoda, Albon, de Vries, Norris and Sargent were out.

In the second session Alonso first led the scoresheet with 1:28.757. Verstappen attacked but narrowly avoided an incident on the formation lap before suddenly losing speed due to transmission problems and pitting.

Verstappen left the car and dropped out of contention – qualifying ended unexpectedly early for him, he did not have time to show the time to start the race in the top ten.

The best time was set by Pérez with a time of 1:28.635. Hulkenberg, Zhou, Magnussen, Bottas and Verstappen failed to qualify for the final.

In the final Pérez led the scoring form in the first attempt with 1:28.265, securing a comfortable lead of almost half a second over his closest rival.

On the second attempt, no one could beat Perez’s result, Leclerc showed the second fastest time, but in the race he would lose ten places at the start.

Sergio Perez won qualifying in Jeddah for the second year in a row to take the second pole of his career.

In the race, he will share the front row of the grid with Fernando Alonso – the last time the Spaniard started from the front row in 2022. Russell and Sainz will start the race from second, Stroll and Okon will start the race from third.

Qualifying results