Sergio Perez took pole position Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

I certainly enjoy the track here in Jeddah. The car came alive at high speeds and I was able to push right to the limit to secure pole position. That said, it has been tricky today. You can lose two tenths through the early section of corners if you’re not careful, especially with the low downforce that we’re running, so I’m very happy to come away with pole. It will be very interesting to see what happens in the race tomorrow, especially with some of the other cars running high downforce. As we saw last year, anything can happen. We have a good race car and showed strong race pace on Friday, so let’s hope Max can also push up the grid and together, we can aim for maximum points for the Team.

The driveshaft broke out of turn 10 on the right rear so that was it for qualifying. It happened really out of the blue, we hadn’t had any issues before that. It was annoying because the car was good up until then, I was comfortable in every session and every time I was on the track, I was quick, so for sure we could have fought for pole. Instead, we now have a bit more work ahead of us tomorrow but it is what it is, it is a long Championship and we will stay positive. I think a win is tricky from that position but I will try to score as many points as possible. It will be hard to get to the front, but we won’t give up. Anything is possible at this track, we have seen some crazy things here, but we have to be realistic. It will be tough but we have good pace so, for sure, we will move forward.

We ended up P16, one-hundredth of a second from P15. It is definitely a shame, but I'm happy with the lap I put together and how we progressed throughout qualifying. As for the car itself, we have to find some more grip and performance to consistently get into Q2 and Q3. Overall, I think we could benefit from what we learnt over the last couple of days, so the team did a good job there. Tomorrow is a new day and I hope the race pace will be good. My main target will be to focus on myself, give one hundred per cent, and score some points!

Jumping into qualifying without driving any laps in FP3 made it a tricky day. Given the unique layout of the circuit, getting the tyres into the right window for a flying lap is difficult, so I heavily locked up the rears going into Turn 1. My last run was pretty decent though, but we lost a lot in the last sector. It's a shame we missed that, and I am disappointed because the potential to make it into Q2 was there. We want to be further ahead, and the team is working together closely to extract the most out of the car.