Verstappen steals pole at Jeddah, Norris in the wall

Red Bull's Max Verstappen had taken pole position for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix by 0.010s over Australian Oscar Piastri. The McLaren driver held up his team's hopes after Lando Norris crashed out and finished 10th only.

On the back of final practice in which McLaren proved the class of the field, qualifying kicked off with Ocon the first to venture out on track. The Frenchman's early outing wasn't very special however as each single driver coming after him improved on his time.

Lando Norris was the first McLaren record a laptime, immediately fastest by quite a margin. The following cars all failed to improve with Verstappen and Tsunoda settling in behind him before Piastri took the top of the leaderboard by 0.007s. When Mercedes' Russell completed his lap he managed to end up 4th, splitting the Red Bull duo.

As that happened, drivers who were more likely to end up on the second half of the grid meanwhile were already gearing up for the second flying lap with Alonso notably improving to 6th, jumping ahead of Leclerc, Antonalli and Albon. The second Ferrari, with Hamilton at the wheel, slotted into 10th.

With 3 minutes remaining Albon moved up into 4th while the mechanics at Alpine had to remove the tyre blanket off of Gasly's car. The blanket hadn't been removed properly, so when the Frenchman attempted to leave the box it dragged behind the front right wheel. Perhaps 30 seconds delay, but nothing else, so Gasly could get on with his business,

Gasly got it done and moved out of the danger zone, into 9th as the chequered flag fell. Hamilton at the time was still on track and in the same situation. He too was able to make it through.

The second part of qualifying started with Albon going out on his own while everybody else was held in the pits by their team until the first one blinked, and then they all suddenly decided to leave the box as well. As another pitlane queue formed, Norris had none of it and waited for another extra minute before going out. This eventually enabled him to take advantage of the slipstream from Piastri, leading to setting the fastest lap so far.

With few minutes left, Hadjar was the only one who didn't have a timed lap. He did set a time in the closing stages but failed to make it through into the top 10. Lawson, Gasly and Alonso all improved on their earlier times but of that trio only Gasly made it into the top 10.

The start of Q2 was given by Piastri, going out somewhat ahead of his competitors. The Australian enjoyed a clear track and was very much on the edge, completing his lap in 1:27.500. Only a whiff later the session was red flagged as Lando Norris had screwed up his lap and ended up in the wall, breaking the front suspension of his McLaren and effectively securing 10th position on the grid for him, at best.

As the car was cleared and everybody returned to the pits, Piastri enjoyed the advantage of being the only one with a time on the board while some others, including the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers had pretty much completed a flying lap and therefore used the best out of that new set of soft tyres.

After the stoppage, Sainz was the first to come back out, followed by Verstappen. While Sainz was far off, Verstappen beat Piastri's time by a mere 0.001s. Verstappen, just like Sainz, returned to the pits and made a race-style pitstop to return to the track with fresh tyres for another attempt.

Meanwhile Russell was starting his flying lap. His first sector was purple, followed by an average middle sector but in the end he was faster than Verstappen.

Piastri was up next and he improved once again to take provisional pole, but it was eventually Verstappen who did it, sealing pole position against the odds by 0.010s over Piastri and 0.113s over Russell.

Charles Leclerc ended up fourth fastest, followed by Antonelli, Sainz, Hamilton, Tsunoda, Gasly and of course Norris, without a time set in Q3.

This result sets us up for yet another interesting race where Norris will face an uphill battle while Verstappen continues to surprise when everyone expected McLaren to lock out the front row.