Verstappen gives competitors more worries: 'Felt more comfortable'

Max Verstappen dealt a blow to the competition on Friday by putting his car in pole position. The Dutchman was 0.319 seconds faster than number two, Charles Leclerc. After qualifying, Verstappen spoke about his feeling in the car.

"I felt a bit more comfortable with the car," the Red Bull driver said. "The balance is a bit more together and I could just push a little bit more. Then qualifying was quite nice, no real big problems and I could just follow the track evolution a bit, so very happy with that."

Verstappen on pole for the first time in Jeddah

Verstappen was close before, but this is the first time he can start from pole position in Saudi Arabia. In 2021, he was heading for the fastest time with one of the most impressive laps Formula 1 has seen in recent years, but things went wrong at turn 27, allowing Lewis Hamilton to start from pole position. Verstappen had to make do with P3.

So this season he did manage to put his car on pole position, with a fairly large margin over his competition. Asked if the car has any weaknesses at all on the track in Jeddah, the Dutchman replied: "I always like particular corners where I think you can find a little bit more but it's about finding the overall compromise to be quick. Even though I think the setup we had yesterday was not as good as today, I'm looking forward to tomorrow and we should have a good race pace. The degradation won't be as high as in Bahrain so we'll have to see how close everyone else is but from our side I think the car is set up well."