Sergio Perez has beaten Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc by two-hundredths of a second to secure his maiden pole position for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. The Mexican setting a new record for most races started without starting from pole position, after piping the Ferrari driver to denied the team a second consecutive front-row lockout.
Leclerc pushed his teammate Carlos Sainz off pole out qualifying the Spaniard by a tenth, but Perez’s teammate Max Verstappen couldn’t improve on his final run. The session had been suspended for almost an hour when Mick Schumacher had a huge crash in the second part of the session.
The Mexican driver bolted to the top with his final flying lap of Q3 on the Jeddah Corniche Circuit as he set the best time of the weekend a 28.200, to triumph over the strong Ferraris. Perez is not known as a great qualifier, he only beat Verstappen once in 2021 but this weekend has been a lot closer to the Dutchman, describing the lap as the lap of his life, while Verstappen described his lap as “terrible.”
Leclerc did improve on his last lap but missed out on securing consecutive poles by two-hundredths, Sainz meanwhile had topped Q3 after the first runs but couldn’t improve on his final lap and was pushed to third.
It sets up an intriguing race, with the Ferraris sandwiched between the Red Bulls at the start, following Leclerc’s win in the season-opener in Bahrain last weekend, where Red Bull suffered an agonising late double retirement.
Esteban Ocon put his Alpine fifth-fastest going nearly four tenths faster than George Russell, who out-qualified teammate Lewis Hamilton for the first time. The seven-time world champion a surprise knock out in Q1 after only going sixteenth, the first time Hamilton has been knocked out on pure pace in the first part of qualifying since Silverstone 2009, his first since Interlagos in 2017.
Russell managed spilt the two Alpine’s after going four hundredths faster than Fernando Alonso. Qualifying was red-flagged for over an hour following a big crash for Schumacher, the Haas driver lost control at turn twelve hitting g the wall on both sides ripping a tyre off which hit the halo.
Haas confirmed the German driver was ok, but Schumacher has been transferred to King Fahad Armed Forces Hospital, for “precautionary checks”.
Mercedes openly admitting they are not competitive at the moment as they battle with aerodynamic problems in their car but no one would have foreseen Hamilton’s struggles. But no one could have predicted that the seven-time champion would have been knocked out in Q1.
Bottas put his Alfa Romeo eighth fastest going seven hundredths faster than Pierre Gasly and the second Haas of Kevin Magnussen. Neither McLaren made it through to the final part of qualifying, when the session resumed following Schumacher’s crash there were no improvements from either Lando Norris or Daniel Ricciardo.
Norris finished the session eleventh fastest, over a tenth faster than Ricciardo. McLarenhase struggled to find pace and performance over the last three weekends in the middle east despite having looked very strong during the first test in Barcelona. Guyana Zuho put his Alfa Romeo a tenth ahead of Schumacher with Lance Stroll slowest in Q2.
Schumacher was not the only driver to crash, Nicolas Latifi lost control of his Williams at Turn Thirteen in Q1. The impact was less severe, and he hit crash barriers rather than an exposed concrete wall and the session was able to resume after a few minutes.
Hamilton was the fastest of those knocked out in Q1, the seven-time champions qualifying starting badly forced onto the soft tyre his firs lap saw him get oversteer at Turn Two and abort the lap. The Englishman forced into an all or nothing lap at the end off Q1 but was already down in sector one only gaining one place.
It was not due to weather or bad luck; Hamilton was down in that position on a lack of pace alone and despite his best efforts and plenty of flying laps on the softest tyre.
When Stroll improved on his final run, he pushed Hamilton out of qualifying in Q1 for the first time since the seven-time champion crashed out at Interlagos 2017. There appears to be little hope of a repeat of his drive to fourth in that race as Mercedes lack the pace.
Alex Albon put his Williams seventeenth, the British-Thai driver going half a second ahead of Nico Hulkenberg. Latifi finished a nineteenth, while another power unit issue for Red Bull Powertrains and a fuel pump issue left Yuki Tsunoda unable to take part in qualifying.
