Image source: Oracle Red Bull Racing
Sergio Perez was today´s fastest in Saudi Arabia after a reliability issue left teammate Max Verstappen out in Q2.
Perez fastest 1.28.265 was closely followed by Leclerc´s 1.28.420. However, the Ferrari driver will start 10 positions behind due to a penalty after Bahrain´s debacle. The Mexican could not hide his happiness after back to back poles in Jeddah.
“I mean Jeddah, I enjoy it a lot. When you have a good car that you can push around this place, you really feel the F1 cars coming alive. And getting a clean, good lap, you know when you nail it. And yeah, that Q3 run one was quite a good jump.”
“I had a good jump from all my previous laps. And that meant that I was able to get the pole, because my second lap, I didn’t manage to get it. I just had a front lock going into Turn 1. That has been really tricky. Turn 1 and Turn 2, always starting the lap into 1 and 2, it was so easy just to lose two tenths straightaway there, especially with the low downforce that we’re running.”
“And just nailing that combination of corners will require a lot of temperature on our tyres as well, so yeah, just in general, just getting that lap, nailing that lap, was really nice.”
Perez hopes teammate Verstappen will be able to improve quickly from the back to have both cars at the front tomorrow.
“It’s a shame, you know. Max has been really strong the whole weekend. So hopefully tomorrow we can have both cars up there, as you never know, with these cars reliability issues can hit you at any time.”
Asked if there was more time left after the Q3 lap he couldn´t finish, Perez explained with the track improving there could have been a little bit more left for him to improve.
“I think it’s just tiny. I went a little bit deep into Turn 4. But no, nothing major. It was already a very clean lap. But I think, yeah, the track was improving, there should have been a little bit more to come.”
The poleman expects an interesting race considering the different downforce the cars are running this weekend.
“Well, I think just in general, you know. I feel like it will be interesting to see, because some cars are running very high downforce others lower downforce, like us. So it will be very interesting to see tomorrow in the race, what we are able to get through and yeah, that will be very interesting.”
