The Mexican driver of the team Red Bull, Sergio ‘Checo’ Perez will start first for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prixfor the second year in a row, and will have a chance to lead the championship with a win on Sunday at the jeddah circuitbehind the abandonment from his partner Max Verstappen.
The qualifying tests from the jeddah circuit confirmed the forceful dominance of the two-time world champion, max verstappenaboard the RB19setting the best time in Q1 (1:28.761) on his first fast lap, being half a second faster than ‘Checo’, who set the next best time.
The best times were completed with the Aston Martin, Fernando Alonso and Lance Strollfollowed by the Ferrari of charles leclerc and Carlos Sainz. The eliminated were Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri), Alex Albón (Williams), Nyck DeVryes (AlphaTauri), Lando Norris (McLaren) and logan sergeant (Williams).
However, the Q2 did not repeat the success for the Dutchman, after his car lose power and force the yellow flagrelegating to ‘Mad Max’ to fifteenth position in Sunday’s race, completely changing the standings after a weekend up to this dominant moment for him.
Without his partner on the track, the opportunity to ‘Czech’ to stay the pole gained strength, and closed the second phase of the quali with the best time (1:28.635), followed by alonso, leclerc and Sainz. The deleted were Nico Hulkenberg (Haas), guanyu zhou (Alfa Romeo) Kevin Magnussen (Haas), Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo) and max verstappen (Red Bull).
Already in the last part of the classification on Saturday, the Mexican was dominant, securing the Best time and staying with the pole positionstarting in the first row with the Monegasque Fernando Alonso of Aston Martin. After them they will start, in the second row, the George Russell’s Mercedes and the Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari.
charles leclerc finished with the second best time but due to a penalty will leave in the twelfth positiontwo in front of Verstappen.