The beauty of motorsport is the ability to push everything to the limit when it counts. Max Verstappen and the Red Bull race team are writing important pages that recall the achievements of Ayrton Senna and McLaren in the 1993 season when the Williams-Renault technical package was clearly ahead of everyone. Today, to beat McLaren, you have to extract everything, just as Verstappen and his team did on the night of Jeddah.
The car has improved significantly since Friday’s free practice, but the advances in drivability wouldn’t have been enough to defeat Oscar Piastri and McLaren. The red flag caused by Lando Norris’s dramatic off-track incident in Q3 changed the plans of the top teams. Everyone thought there wouldn’t be enough time for two runs within the eight minutes and thirty-two seconds, except Verstappen. It was the first crucial decision towards pole position—Max managed to lower Piastri’s time by a thousandth with a set of tires only used for half a lap before the red flag, then rushed to the pits to mount the final set of new softs.
A very fast outlap followed, and here came the other crucial moment. The Red Bull pit crew instructed Tsunoda to wait for Verstappen at the exit of turn 27 to provide him with a slipstream, which Yuki executed flawlessly. The rest, and what a rest, was done by Max, flawless to the point that it almost seemed easy, as he secured his second pole position of the season. “After free practice, it seemed impossible,” a smiling Max Verstappen commented. “I can only think that when temperatures drop, McLaren’s superiority is reduced.” All true, but there’s also a lot of Max in what we’re seeing at the start of this season. “The whole team is working well,” said the Red Bull box. “But it’s easier to do it with Max in the car.”
McLaren found themselves with second and tenth positions at the end of a qualifying session that seemed already settled with an easy one-two. It’s true that as temperatures drop, the advantage McLaren’s MCL39 holds over the competition diminishes, but the one-two was still within the grasp of the Piastri-Norris duo. Lando threw it away in the very first important lap of the weekend. Driving today for McLaren means reaching Q3 with your arm out of the cockpit, then from there the real battle begins with your teammate, a duel that Norris immediately compromised after four corners. “Lando pushed too hard in a corner that doesn’t forgive,” commented Andrea Stella.
Lando Norris’s mistake probably also compromised the possibility of seeing Oscar Piastri on pole. After learning that his teammate was out of the race, Oscar faced his last flying lap undoubtedly motivated to try to beat Max but not enough to use every last inch of track. “Oscar improved further in his last lap,” Stella commented, “I don’t think there was much more.”
What made the difference was a hundredth of a second, an infinitesimal margin that, if Piastri had caught up with Norris, would have been very bitter, but with Lando in tenth, it was at most somewhat bittersweet. For Piastri, the perspective is still to leave Jeddah ahead of his teammate in the overall standings.
Mercedes had a good day with both cars in the top 5. “I would have signed for third before qualifying,” commented Russell, but after posting the best overall time in his final lap, he believed in the possibility of a surprise. In the end, he found himself just 0.113 seconds behind Max Verstappen, a small gap, but enough to land him in the second row.
Kimi Antonelli also made a mark at the end, now specializing in progressions that culminate when it counts. And above all, Antonelli continues his path without errors or mistakes, an aspect not to be taken for granted, as Norris painfully discovered on his bitter night in Jeddah.
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