Verstappen: I didn't expect to be on pole position at all!

      Max Verstappen once again showed off his ability to squeeze everything out of the car at the right moment and won pole, at the same time setting a new track record in Jeddah.

      Max Verstappen (1st): "I'm very happy! After the third practice session, and in general, if you remember how the weekend was going, I didn't expect to be on pole at all! But towards evening, the car seemed to come to life.

      When we made the last adjustments to the settings, it became much more fun to drive, and the grip level gradually increased. Although it is clear that due to the proximity of the walls, it is very difficult to complete a good qualifying lap on this track. It is necessary to act very precisely here.

      But now I'm really satisfied. Of course, it's best to start from pole position in Jeddah, although I think it will be difficult to hold off the onslaught of rivals during the race. But we will try, we will make every effort for this.

      I am very happy that we qualified so confidently, and it certainly turned out much better than in Bahrain. So let's see what we can achieve in tomorrow's Grand Prix."

      Yuki Tsunoda (8th): "Saturday ended with the 8th result, and this is more or less normal. Congratulations to Max, he did a great lap and won the pole position. But I drove my last fastest lap in the final session very sloppily – in general, I expected to achieve more today.

      But we keep learning, and it seems that whenever I attack more aggressively, some unpredictable things happen. Putting everything together to complete a lap without mistakes is quite difficult on this track.

      I'm upset that in the qualifying final, when it's important to put everything together, I can't do it. But the positive thing is that this weekend we got to the third part of qualifying again.

      Some of my difficulties are related to the fact that I don't have enough experience yet, because this is only my third race with Red Bull Racing, but I'm already driving more confidently.

      However, we want to achieve more, and I hope that tomorrow's race will be more stable, especially since the car's settings are more designed for long laps rather than qualifying. But tomorrow I will do my best to overtake my rivals and score more points."

      Christian Horner, team principal: "Pole position was a reward for us, as it gives us the chance to drive on a free track and not be in a zone of turbulence behind another car.

      We can see that McLaren are very fast this weekend, especially over the race distance. I think we'll have to really fight to keep Oscar Piastri behind, but Max is starting from the best position, and that's great.

      To be honest, I didn't believe that such a result was possible, but it shows that you should never give up. We have a great team, and we keep fighting, constantly striving to make the car faster, and then Max takes over and adds the last missing element."