Oracle Red Bull Racing finishes 1-2 in Saudi Arabian GP

It was great to get my 100th podium today and it was another great race for us this weekend. I am very happy to win here in Jeddah: it has been a great start to the year and we don’t know the full potential of the car yet so now we want to keep the momentum going. Because of the early pit stop with the safety car, I knew we had to work on managing the pace. Every time that I pushed I tried to extend the gap as you don’t want to be driving on the limit constantly and be taking too many risks in this circuit. It was a very long stint on the hard tyre during the race but the pace of the car was very good and I was good at managing my tyres. In the last stint, the tyres were getting cold and it was easy to lose the grip at the end, but we pushed through and I think we did everything well today. The ultimate goal is to fight for the championship so we are off to a great start. 

I think the early safety car compromised our race quite a lot unfortunately, I lost quite a lot going into traffic with Lando and Lewis, around seven to eight seconds. We needed to get through that quicker than we did to challenge for the win but other than that it was a strong drive and performance. I really feel like we have done the two steps forward that I was looking for this weekend, so we are getting closer to where we need to be. The Ferrari has the pace and I think there are tracks where they will be a lot closer to us, they probably didn’t maximise their full potential today and we did. Max is driving at a super high level and I think he is the only driver who has maximised qualifying and the race so far this season. It is great though because I have the best possible challenge in him. I must keep evolving weekend after weekend. Now, my full focus is on Melbourne and getting on top of what we have done here in Jeddah. 

It was a difficult race today. I made some mistakes and let some cars behind me pass when I was trying to overtake the car in front, and that’s my fault. We struggled with our pace and grip today, so it was difficult to drive. On the positive side, we had a strong qualifying, and we’ll look into our race pace and figure out why we struggled as much as we did. There are things I can improve on today, so we’ll look through them and apply the learnings for the future. 

It was a tough race and overall, a tough weekend, which is very frustrating. During the Safety Car time, when almost everyone pitted, we had a slow pit stop and a few laps from the end, I made a mistake and hit too much kerb in Turn 1, which caused a spin. I’m staying optimistic though, as I know we have some positive signs and we just need to polish our package up. We have a week off now, and there will be a big push from everyone to get it right and make sure we have a good package for the next race. I know the team wants it as badly as I do. I’m excited to go back racing in Melbourne, so let’s get ready for it.