“You might as well start writing your report now, mate,” mutters a media sage on his return from trackside wandering, as Max Verstappen flashes up on the paddock screens after eclipsing the rest of the field in FP1 by nearly half a second. Benched for Thursday’s media sessions due to battling a stomach bug, Verstappen rocked up to the Jeddah Corniche Circuit fashionably late and fired off a trio of hammerblows to the rest of the field by headlining the full set of practice sessions. Few in the paddock had any optimism that the race would be anything other than a foregone conclusion and yet, somehow, fate had its own funny way of intervening.
Come the end of Sunday’s race, Sergio Perez was the man standing on the middle step of the podium after largely dominating proceedings in Saudi Arabia, while Red Bull team-mate Verstappen had to dip into his back catalogue and perform a sterling recovery drive to rescue second after a mechanical issue knocked the wind from his sails in qualifying.
Across the three practice sessions, Verstappen’s margins over second place were 0.483s, 0.208s and 0.613s. Therefore, it seemed to everyone around the paddock that Saturday and Sunday were set for another Verstappenian display of crushing dominance, all but dispelling the hope that 2023’s settled ruleset could offer a closer championship fight. Instead, a faulty driveshaft denied the world champion another pole position, instead dumping him out of qualifying in a lowly 15th place and handing Perez the whip hand. Red Bull’s number two fulfilled his contractual obligations perfectly, picking up the
