2022 Saudi Arabian GP: Post-Friday reactions from Max Verstappen and Perez

Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen were out on track early in the session to make the most of the hour in Free Practice One. Max started the session on hard tyres and set a blistering time of 1:31.888, which was enough to see him finish the session in P2. Only Charles Leclerc was able to beat him on soft tyres. Max also managed to complete 24 laps.

Perez also started on the hard tires and set the fastest time of 1:32.689. He also returned to the track after the red flag on a set of softs and improved, with the best time of 1:31.563, which saw him finish the session in P7 after completing 25 laps.

In Free Practice Two – which was under the floodlights on the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. Max started his session on medium tyres and pushed for three flying laps, improving each time, his best time on the yellows was a 1:30.214, which was his best time of the session.

The Dutchman had a disrupted stint on a set of softs and was unable to improve his time. His last stint in the session saw him on mediums again for a race simulation. He finished the session in P2, behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, after 22 laps.

Perez followed the same pattern as Max, he also set faster times throughout his first three flyers, his best was 1:30.360, which saw him finish the session in P4, just 0.04s behind Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who finished in P3. Checo completed 24 laps in total.

Max Verstappen

“The sessions ran quite smoothly today, we completed our programme and tried out lots of different tyre sets. It seems like Ferrari were quite competitive again, we still have a little bit of work to do to catch up with them and there’s plenty of room for improvement.

The track feels pretty much the same as last year, the barriers have moved slightly and in terms of visibility, it hasn’t made a noticeable impact. Looking ahead to qualifying, we still need to look at some data, we’ll see how it all goes tomorrow.”

Sergio Perez

“We ran both cars on different programmes and I think we got the data we needed, so now we have some work to do tonight. It was difficult to get the lap in I needed to see exactly how we will perform over one lap here because I had a lot of traffic out there.

I think it could be another straight shootout with Ferrari on Saturday but at the moment we are focusing on ourselves and hopefully tomorrow we are able to make the steps we’d like with the car. It will be important in qualifying to make sure we get the space for a clean lap because traffic can be a bit difficult around here so we need to make sure we are on it.”