Saudi Arabian Grand Prix: Qualifying Recap

With Q1 underway at 20:00 local under the blaze of floodlights around the sweeping 6.174-kilometer (3.836-mile), 27-turn Jeddah Corniche Circuit – qualifying’s opening sector proved a mixed bag for Ocon and Bearman. Both picked up speed throughout the session, commencing with an opening run on new Pirelli P Zero Red softs followed by an outing on used softs. Third and final laps came on a second set of fresh softs with Bearman progressing through to Q2 courtesy of a 1:28.850 (P11) while Ocon exited Saturday’s qualifying on a 1:29.092 (P19).

Bearman ran a first lap on scrubbed softs to start the second phase of knockout qualifying – the rookie banking a 1:28.648. He failed to improve on a new set of the compound and wound up P15 and out at the checkered in Q2.

Max Verstappen won the fight for pole – the Red Bull Racing driver’s Q3 hot lap of 1:27.294 beating the 1:27.304 from McLaren’s Oscar Piastri.

Ollie Bearman:

“I honestly don’t think we had Q3 in us today. I was happy to get through Q1, it was a good lap I thought. It was a bit more difficult in Q2; I felt really good on the used tire but then jumping onto the new set, it’s really difficult to get them into the correct window and unfortunately that was the case today – I didn’t improve on my new tires. It’s difficult to say about long runs, it was a messy day yesterday with red flag interruptions, but degradation is a little higher than last year. We’ve been decent on race trim this season though, so hopefully I have the pace delta I had last year and have a good race.”

Esteban Ocon:

“I lost a little bit of time in the first sector, but even if I remove that, we would’ve been out. We’ve struggled the whole way through this weekend, unfortunately. I think it’s been a tough one and although we’ve improved a few things, we need to keep working to optimize what there is. I’m sure we’ll get on top of the issues we’re facing and get more consistency in terms of performance for the future.”

Ayao Komatsu:

“Unfortunately we underperformed in qualifying, I don’t feel we maximized our potential. It’s actually quite tricky to get the performance out of the soft tires and I think as a team we’ve still got a lot to learn. When we put it right, we can see the potential, but it’s a fine edge. I think if we understand those things, we have potential, and tomorrow is a completely different story in the long run. We’ll learn from this qualifying, but we’re now focused on tomorrow and how we can move forward.”