11/03/2024
NEWS STORY
Max Verstappen: "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."
Sergio Perez: "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."
Christian Horner: "Today was a very well executed race, the only mishap we had was the unsafe release, but Checo had enough in hand to keep that second place and Max was clinical throughout to win again. The cars performed brilliantly all weekend and the drivers have done their part to deliver us a second one-two of the season already. I think you can see that the Team is operating at an incredibly high level, trackside and back home in Milton Keynes, we've carried that momentum from last year and that is testament to a lot of hard work from everyone. The RB20 was an aggressive evolution from the RB19 for us but after a dominant display in Bahrain, we've come to another circuit and it's performed well again. In Melbourne we will have another, very different challenge, so let's see how we perform. We have started the season in the best possible way we could and the whole Team now want to continue this form into the remainder of a very long season."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Jeddah here.