Lando Norris caused a dramatic moment in Q3 when he pushed the front axle of his McLaren too hard on the approach to Turn 4 at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. He ran wide, bounced over the kerbs at Turn 5, and hit the barrier with enough force to bring out a red flag and a medical car. At that moment, Max Verstappen was just starting to warm up a fresh set of soft tyres, getting ready for his first qualifying lap.

With just over eight minutes left on the clock, Verstappen and the Red Bull team had to quickly rethink their strategy. If Max wanted to do two timed laps, he would need to complete at least one out-lap, and possibly two, along with time to refuel in between. The team came up with a clever plan. They decided to keep the current set of tyres on the car, fuel it for two push laps, and then bring Max in after the first flying lap to fit a new set of tyres for another run.

His first lap was already good enough for provisional pole position, but only by a tiny margin of 0.001 seconds. It was a strong performance considering the car was heavier than usual due to the extra fuel. Still, with Oscar Piastri having been the only driver to set a time before the red flag and having plenty of time left for another run, Verstappen knew that small lead would not be enough. He needed to go again.

He was clear about where he could improve. On the first run, he had not managed to get the tyres fully up to temperature and lacked grip heading into Turn 1. The second time around, he avoided that mistake. After pitting for fresh tyres, he delivered a lap that was 0.010 seconds faster than Piastri’s best effort.

Red Bull had been trying different car set-ups throughout the weekend, as they looked for the best way to extract performance from the RB21. Due to ongoing aerodynamic correlation issues, the team has relied heavily on trackside adjustments. The car remained a bit unpredictable and twitchy under pressure, which is why the two-lap plan worked so well. The first lap helped Max build rhythm and confidence, while the second was the real attack.

Even though Verstappen had been closest to the McLarens in the only truly representative practice session, he had warned that Red Bull might not be the favourites this weekend. But after leading the times in Q1, he put together a brilliant final lap right at the end of Q3, beating Piastri by just one hundredth of a second to take pole in Saudi Arabia.

After the session, Verstappen, quoted by Motorsport Week, explained how it all came together. “All of qualifying went well, of course. Around here, I think it’s always important to have quite a bit of rhythm, so naturally you do quite a lot of laps. Also the tyres, luckily, they hold on to do that.

“Of course, the red flag in Q3 is not ideal, but of course everyone has to deal with that. So we opted for that two-lap strategy. I’m happy that we did that, it just kept me on top of things and it felt good.”

He also shared how his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase helped guide the approach after Norris’s crash. “With the crash, I think the only thing that it then meant was that, of course, you had to change your approach,” he said. “I wasn’t entirely sure what to do.

“At the end of the day, GP said, 'let’s fuel it for two laps'. You do the first lap on that used out-lap tyre. Then you pit and you go on to the new. Of course, naturally, you carry a bit more fuel, so you’re a bit slower in the first time. Yes, I think it was the right call.”

Verstappen ended by saying: “At the end, that was definitely the right thing to do for me at least in terms of the feeling I had with the car and building up to the limit.”