Red Bull’s Perez snatches pole from Ferrari’s Leclerc at tricky Jeddah Corniche Street Circuit; Sainz P3, Verstappen P4; Hamilton shockingly knocked out in Q1; Schumacher airlifted to hospital after vicious Q2 shunt
On an incident-filled and frankly scary Saturday qualifying for tomorrow’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, it was Red Bull’s ostensible Number Two who managed to come out on top of the timing sheets. Veteran Sergio Perez bested not only his much more heralded teammate, Max Verstappen, but also both Ferraris, the team that looks most likely to challenge Red Bull for the big prizes this season. With a rebel drone strike on a nearby oil facility yesterday sending a a wave of unease through the paddock, the simmering tension was further compounded when Haas’s Mick Schumacher lost it during Q2 and suffered a vicious shunt Turn 10 of this very tight and tricky Jeddah Conriche Street Circuit that shot him into one concrete barrier and then across to the other side of the track and down the road for quite some ways. While the Haas was completely destroyed, the car also did its part by breaking apart at the rear, as designed, thereby dissipating energy away from the driver. So, despite the massive impact, the initial medical reports on Schumacher were all positive and he was airlifted to hospital for precautionary reasons rather than emergency ones. However, the young German, who is trying to follow in his seven-time champion father Michael’s footsteps, was preemptively ruled out for the Grand Prix and it looks like Haas will only be fielding Kevin Magnussen’s car when the lights go out for tomorrow’s race. Magnussen kept his cool after his teammate’s disturbing crash and qualified P10.
Pics courtesy GrandPrix247.com
Schumacher’s accident led to a lengthy Red Flag period with just under five minutes in Q2, both for Schumacher’s painfully slow extraction from his wrecked car and then for some serious track cleanup and barrier repair at the scene of the crash site. But the marshals and race directors did yeoman’s work and were able to get Quali back underway, leading to the all important top ten shootout in Q3. Ferrari had looked the strongest on overall one-lap pace through the race weekend so far, so it was no surprise to see Charles Leclerc, last week’s race winner and pole-sitter in Bahrain, lay down the quickest lap as the seconds ticked down in the final qualifying session. His teammate Carlos Sainz slotted in right behind him by a little over a tenth on his final lap, making it a provisional Ferrari front row lockout, But Perez had other ideas. The veteran pilot drove a flawless final lap, coming nerve wrakingly close to the barriers at times, but wringing the maximum speed out of the Red Bull to earn his first-ever Formula 1 pole and beat back the Ferrari challenge for today. Interestingly, his normally superlative teammate Verstappen struggled to get his Soft Pirelli tires into their optimal operational window durning a cool and breezy night in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah and the Dutch reigning world champion could only muster the fourth fastest time. So it will be Perez and Leclerc on the front row and Sainz and Verstappen on row two, which should make for a really intriguing and likely contentious opening lap in tomorrow’s GP.
If Verstappen was disappointed with his quali result it was nothing compared to Mercedes ace Lewis Hamilton’s shock at how his day went. While the seven-time Champion snuck onto the podium in last week’s season opener when both Red Bull’s suffered fuel pump issues and failed to finish the race, there was no disguising the new Mercedes W13 chassis’ serious teething problems on Saturday. Unable to find a balance between downforce and trim levels that would give hime straight-line speed while also limiting the severe porpoising the Silver Arrows have experienced, Hamilton found himself much slower than his junior teammate, George Russell, and unceremoniously knocked out in Q1. So the man with the all-time record for F1 poles with one hundred and three of them will start from P16 tomorrow, and with team and driver seemingly at a loss as to how to improve his car, much less how to do it under parc fermé conditions overnight. Russell, for his part, was able to come to grips with his mount much better than his team leader and qualified in P6. Still, that put the young Englishman behind the P5 Alpine of Esteban Ocon, not exactly what the powers that be at Mercedes envisioned when they drew up this new 2022 car.
Top 10 qualifiers for the Saudi Arabian GP:
| POS | DRIVER | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1:29.705 | 1:28.924 | 1:28.200 | |
| 2 | 1:29.039 | 1:28.780 | 1:28.225 | |
| 3 | 1:28.855 | 1:28.686 | 1:28.402 | |
| 4 | 1:28.928 | 1:28.945 | 1:28.461 | |
| 5 | 1:30.093 | 1:29.584 | 1:29.068 | |
| 6 | 1:29.680 | 1:29.618 | 1:29.104 | |
| 7 | 1:29.978 | 1:29.295 | 1:29.147 | |
| 8 | 1:29.683 | 1:29.404 | 1:29.183 | |
| 9 | 1:29.891 | 1:29.418 | 1:29.254 | |
| 10 | 1:29.831 | 1:29.546 | 1:29.588 |
Complete qualifying results available via Formula1.com.
Tomorrow’s race airs live on ESPN beginning at 1pm Eastern here in the States. The fight for F1 supremacy looks to be between Ferrari and Red Bull, at least in the early going. And with all four of those cars jockeying for the lead from the front four spots on the grid, the Saudi Arabian GP could very well be decided on the opening lap for good or for ill. Hope to see you then to find out how it all shakes out!