Verstappen braced for ‘tight’ F1 Saudi GP pole position battle

Max Verstappen has predicted that the strength of Red Bull’s rivals in qualifying will create a “tight” battle for pole position at Formula 1’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Red Bull’s domination of the latest ground effect regulations continued at the 2024 season-opener in Bahrain as Verstappen stormed to a crushing 22-second win.

However, the Austrian outfit’s notion that the grid would converge this term did transpire in qualifying with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc setting the quickest overall time.

Verstappen admitted at the end of the previous weekend that he couldn’t pinpoint the exact reasons for Red Bull’s relative one-lap speed lagging behind its race pace.

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But having topped the opening practice hour in Jeddah and followed that up with third in the twilight FP2 session, Verstappen is optimistic about Red Bull’s prospects.

“I think it’s been pretty good overall,” Verstappen assessed.

“Of course, FP1 is always a bit more slippery, but I have to say they prepared the track quite well to be honest, for like a street circuit, it wasn’t too dirty.

“Many other places have been alright, FP2, long run, short run. I think overall we learned a lot again.”

He added: “It will be tight but we are happy with our performance today and looking forward to tomorrow.”

Verstappen wound up 0.331s adrift of Fernando Alonso’s benchmark pace for Aston Martin in FP2, but he suspects that rival teams were running higher engine modes.

“Of course, there are always things that you look at to do better over one-lap performance, but also I think some teams already use a little bit more power, like they did in Bahrain,” the Dutchman continued. “So we’ll take that also into consideration.

“But when we went into the long runs it looked again quite nice, so I’m quite happy with that.”

Meanwhile, Sergio Perez has notched pole position on the past two visits to Saudi Arabia and was delighted with the balance he discovered with his RB20 in practice.

“I think we are in a good place with the car and performance, it was a very positive Friday,” Perez reflected.

“We just need to do some fine-tuning but I am happy with the window we have the car in, we understand what we need for tomorrow.

“We have a very good idea what direction we are going to take to make the car faster and if we can do that it is going to benefit the long run and the qualifying.

“I am very pleased with today. It is a matter of putting everything together in qualifying, that will be the main target and we will see what we are able to do.”

With traffic proving to be a problem on the tight and twisting streets across Thursday, Perez has highlighted the need to ensure that he completes uninterrupted runs.

“Sector one is super-fast and can be scary if you get some traffic there, so we need some clean laps tomorrow, I am looking forward to Friday,” he concluded.