Red Bull continued their emphatic start to the season with a second one-two. This time the top two flipped with Sergio Perez sitting on top of the podium in the Saudi Arabian GP, with the Mexican leading a Red Bull one-two for the first time ever.
The 33-year-old started the race on pole position and after temporarily losing track position to veteran Fernando Alonso, he stormed to his first race of the season.
Max Verstappen, who is becoming known for his ability to slice through the grid and pick his way to the front after starting towards the back, finished just behind Perez after starting the race in 15th.
Here is the reaction from both sides of the Red Bull garage.
Sergio Perez – ‘I’m here to fight for the title’
Perez claimed his fifth career win and his first since Singapore last year when he won in difficult conditions. The Mexican is quickly becoming one of the more adept drivers on street circuits, with his last four wins coming in Baku, Monaco, Singapore and now Jeddah.
“No, I did enjoy the race to be honest. I enjoyed it a lot, especially at the end, just pushing each other with the lap times knowing that he went a tenth faster, tenth slower, tenth slower, and it was all pretty intense. Then we were told to maintain a certain pace, then I was told again to push then to maintain the pace, so it was just a bit all over the place,” Perez said.
“I didn’t get a good launch, something I need to work on with the engineers to make sure we fix that, and Fernando just had a better start, and we lost a position, but I knew that it was not the end of the world. It’s a 50-lap race, it’s a pretty long one, and it’s more important to manage my tyres at the time, don’t get mad and make sure I was able to do my own race.
“Once I got past Fernando, I could do my race, but once again when that Safety Car came out, it reminded me of Jeddah last year again and I was like ‘not again’ but luckily, we hadn’t pitted at the time so yeah, it was a new race after the Safety Car again.
“Very early on, Max came back, and we were basically towards the end just making sure we get that healthy gap between myself and Max but that meant we were pushing quite hard and trying to get to maintain the gap.”
The Red Bull’s look clear of the rest of the pack and are producing very similar lap times to each other, with Perez matching Verstappen’s pace this weekend.
“We’ve been really close in Bahrain and we’ve been really close here. We are living with very small margins at the moment. I felt we both pushed more than we needed, taking that stress from the car. In the end, it’s a massive team result. I’m here to fight for the title.”
Max Verstappen – ‘I’m not happy, I’m not here to be second’
Verstappen cruised to victory in the last race in Bahrain as he kickstarted the defence of his World Championship in perfect fashion. But he was hit with a hammer blow in qualifying yesterday as he suffered a driveshaft failure, which force him to retire from qualifying in Q2 meaning he started from 15th.
As he had proved before, it was not a difficult task for the Dutchman to recover, but only to second place.
“Well, I hope of course a long time [on keeping the gap to other teams]. But it's not only about the pace of the car, we also need to make sure we are reliable without any issues," the Dutchman said.
“My first weekend [in Bahrain] was not very clean, because of just the big balance shift from testing to the race weekend, some other things which were going on in the background, and now again after three positive practice sessions of course I have an issue in qualifying."
“Of course, I recovered to second which is good, and in general the whole feeling in the team, everyone is happy, but personally I'm not happy, because I'm not here to be second.
"Especially when you are also working very hard also back at the factory to make sure you arrive here in a good state, making sure everything is spot on, and then you have to do a recovery race, which I like, I mean I don't mind doing it, but when you are fighting for a championship and it looks like it's between two cars, we have to make sure the two cars are reliable.
“I never really think about it, but I think realistically with or without the Safety Car, I think P2 was the highest possible.
“The beginning, the first few laps were really hard to follow cars because of the street circuit, the fast corners, the walls are all very close, you get kind of a tailwind effect, and the car is a bit all over the place.
"After a few laps, it all started to settle in a bit better and I could pick them off one by one, and the pace was good.
“The Safety Car of course helped me a bit to get back in the race, but even with that in the restart you just lose too much time to Checo [Perez], for example. So, once I got into P2, it was quite a decent gap on a track where there is not a lot of deg.”
Verstappen did have a moment of concern towards the end of the race as he was on the team radio complaining about his driveshaft again.
“I tried to close the gap a bit, but at one point I picked up these vibrations on the driveshaft, on the rear. The team could not see anything, but I'm fairly sure there was something odd going on with the balance since the vibrations started to kick in,” said Verstappen.
“At one point I did the calculations; I wouldn't have been able to close that gap to the end with only 10 laps to left, so at one point I think it is more important to just settle for second, not having an issue with the car.”
Formula One jets off to the down under in Australia next as Red Bull look to continue their perfect start to the season.