Red Bull’s Max Verstappen believes that his RB21 car is showing “very promising” improvement after he finished second at 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Verstappen began the race from pole position after he outqualified McLaren’s Oscar Piastri by 0.010 seconds in Qualifying, yet his decision to cut the opening corner cost him a five-second time penalty and handed victory to Piastri – who is now the championship leader and 12 points clear of Verstappen in third place.
Lando Norris split the pair in second but is just two points ahead of the reigning four-time champion, as Verstappen felt that his performance was “very promising” if not for the penalty after having initially struggled in Friday Practice with tyre management.
Verstappen though was “positively surprised at his medium-tyre pace as he kept Piastri at bay by one-and-a-half seconds in his attempt to open a five-second gap ahead of serving his penalty at his pit stop, which proved futile before he experienced “understeer” on the hard tyres.
Verstappen ultimately finished 2.843s off Piastri but he felt that Red Bull still need to be more competitive at high tyre degradation circuits, as F1 prepares to head to Miami – which is a low tyre degradation circuit – on the weekend of 2-4 May.
“Of course, on tracks with higher degradation we still have more work to do, but we did well today with the set up, the car went well and we had really good race pace.
“Especially after Bahrain, this was a good weekend to finish off the triple header and we just need to keep working and be as consistent as possible. It really has been a good and positive race and it is promising for the races ahead.”
Team Principal, Christian Horner added that Verstappen would of won if he hadn’t received his time penalty which he proceeded to criticise softly.
“Arguably without that penalty we would have won today, so there are a lot of positives to take, a lot of lessons and we know where we have to improve.
“We believed Max was clearly ahead on the first lap and it was a very harsh decision but at that point it was best to concede, serve the penalty, get your head down and keep going.”
Horner also spoke of his belief that Verstappen is still right in the title hunt despite the lead changing hands from Norris to Piastri, with the latter having now won three of the last four Grands Prix.
“Ultimately, they were good, important points today and we are only 12 points off the lead of the Drivers’ Championship and took a few points out of Lando, so we have everything to play for.”
