Max Verstappen entered qualifying for the Saudi GP with a lot of confidence, however, he failed to extract the full potential of the RB18, while his teammate, Sergio Pérez, took a surprising pole position.
The world champion had problems with his tires and with the balance of the car. After all the drivers completed a fast lap in Q3, Verstappen was eighth, but after the last attempt the Dutchman minimized the damage by moving up to fourth.
Logically, starting from so far back did not satisfy Verstappen , as he seemed to have the pace to take pole position in Saudi Arabia, as the Mexican driver demonstrated in the other RB18 .
“The first lap of Q3 was really a drama, I had 0 grip. And the second lap was not good enough.
“It’s very strange, I think we need to look at some things. The way I warmed up my tires compared to the other drivers in Q3 was different,” he added.
Balance was one of the main problems for Verstappen in Jeddah qualifying: “That was the case in the fast corners, in turns 16 and 22 for example, there was no balance there.”
“He just couldn’t attack the corners and he was understeer all the time. And of course that’s obviously not what you want for a qualifying session.”
The only cause for joy for Red Bull is that the team was able to snatch pole position from Ferrari thanks to Sergio Pérez’s great last lap: “Yes, Checo did a very good lap. That is positive, of course, and the car is also fast in itself. I hope we have a good balance for tomorrow’s race and that we can forget about qualifying for a bit.”
“In any case, last year’s race showed that chaos lurks all the time in Jeddah and qualifying results don’t have to be everything,” concluded the Dutchman.
