The Mexican Sergio Perez (Red Bull) will start from pole position this Sunday at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix following achieving the best time in the qualifying session held this Saturday. The Spanish Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) will start second.
For his part, the current double world champion, Max Verstappen, had a problem in his Red Bull, this Saturday during the qualifying session for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the second round of the 2023 season, where in Sunday’s race he will start in 14th or 15th place. The Dutch driver, who had dominated the three free practice sessions and the first heat of the qualifying session (Q1), he suddenly lost power in Q2 and stated on the radio, in a message in English, that he had “an engine problem”. Minutes later it was learned that the problem was in the transmission shaft.
Perez picked up the pieces in Verstappen’s absence, posting a 1m 28.265 in the decisive phase of Q3, 0.155s ahead of Ferrari rival Charles Leclerc, who will lose 10 places due to an engine penalty.
Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin therefore jump to the front row as their strong start to the season continuesfollowed by the leading Mercedes of George Russell, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and his teammate Lance Stroll.
Verstappen, who won the first race of the new season in Bahrain at the beginning of the month, now looks greatly diminished for Sunday’s race on the urban circuit of Jeddah, to be run at 2:00 p.m. with Star+ transmission. He will start fifteenth on Sunday.
Later, the Dutchman was frustrated when explaining what happened to end up in that position: “At turn 10 the driveshaft broke. So that’s really unfortunate. And also something I don’t understand, because actually we’ve never had a problem with it so far this year. But yeah, it happened. So let’s analyze everything. And try to understand how it happened”, reflected Verstappen, who did not want to delve into excuses regarding what happened: “I think it should not matter if the cars are fast or not. I think you always have to be just as disappointed or upset when things go wrong. And we have to make sure these things don’t happen once more. It doesn’t matter if you’re fighting in front or last, you want the car to be reliable.”
Despite his annoyance, the defending champion assured that he sees himself with a chance of finishing on the podium in Sunday’s race: “If everything goes well in the first round, I think we can go a long way.. But we have to wait and see how far we can go. Starting in a bad position is normally a bit chaotic on the first lap”, he assessed, while giving Pérez his go-ahead to get a good result: “For the team it is important that ‘Checo’ is up there. I’m sure we have a good opportunity with ‘Checo’ tomorrow in which he can get away”.
For his part, Pérez sympathized with his partner: “It’s a shame. Max has been very strong all weekend. So hopefully tomorrow we can get both cars up there. Like you never know, with these cars, reliability issues can hit you at any time,” he assured.
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