Verstappen was fastest in all three practice sessions at the Jeddah
It left Perez as the lone
“Max has been really strong the whole weekend, so hopefully we can have both cars up there,” Perez said. “You never know with these cars, reliability issues can hit you at any time.”
Verstappen will start 15th.
“The driveshaft broke ... It was annoying because the car was good up until then, I was comfortable in every session and every time I was on the track, I was quick, so for sure we could have fought for pole," Verstappen said. “Instead, we now have a bit more work ahead of us. It is a long championship and we will stay positive. I think a win is tricky from that position, but I will try to score as many points as possible.”
Leclerc said even without the penalty he wasn't all that impressed with his qualifying effort because the entire grid is chasing
“The lap — I'm really, really happy. It was really on the limit,” Leclerc said. “On the other hand, I feel the
The penalty to Leclerc pushes
Is he in position to win his first F1 race since 2013?
“No, I think we are not in that position yet. I think on pure pace,
“I think our race is behind us. But we saw Max could not complete qualifying with a mechanical issue, so even if we focus on our mirrors and try to keep the people behind us, if anything happened in front, we will try to take the opportunity, for sure.”
“We just need to keep trying. No matter what changes we’ve been making, we’ve been struggling to extract the speed, and I just don’t feel properly connected to the car at the moment,” Hamilton said. “That is something we will work on to improve the confidence in the next races. George did a great job and he wasn’t that far off some of the cars at the front, so we just need to keep pushing.”
Oscar Piastri was ninth for McLaren and Pierre Gasly 10th for Alpine.
Sargeant later spun in the qualifying group in his desperate push to not qualify last. Had his earlier lap not been deleted, Sargeant would have advanced into the second round of qualifying. He'll start 20th.
“I put in a very fast lap but it was deleted as I crossed the pitlane entry by a margin. There was no performance gain so it’s frustrating, but I still had two more laps to deliver and I didn’t, so my apologies go to the team,” Sargeant said. “Although I’ve given myself a lot more work than I needed to, I’m quite optimistic about (Sunday) and I’ll make it up to the team.”
The Jeddah circuit is the second-longest track on the F1 circuit at 6.174 kilometers (3.836 miles) and was built alongside the
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