GP Arabia, qualifying – Students: “Max's prowess, but how long will he last in Red Bull?”

Verstappen's double miracle

How do you do it Max Verstappen to perform certain feats while around him there is a flood that does not stop, it's a real mystery. Getting pole position on a street circuit while traveling at over 254 times on average is a feat that speaks for itself. But have trailing by as much as 3 tenths a wild Charles Leclerc with the best Ferrari of recent years increases the value even more than what Verstappen did yesterday, on the night of Jeddah. And the usual dilemma arises: credit to the car or the driver? An infinite discussion that for us stops at the banal observation that, with the same car, Perez (3rd) remained half a second behind, i.e. a margin that establishes the different level of skill between the two.

Does Leclerc have a secret weapon?

As for today's grand prix, the speech from the eve of Bahrain applies: What is the real limit to which Red Bull can push itself? And that of Ferrari? We may be witnessing a copy-and-paste race from last Saturday. But certain words from Leclerc make you think that Ferrari has something more to play for. Something that hasn't been seen. Because in effect SF24 is a laboratory of work in progress, the goodness of which was demonstrated by the very young man Ollie Bearman, the English rookie who, having climbed onto the red without even a lap of preparation, made a great impression in PL3 and in Q1, always putting none other than Hamilton behind him and then remained 3 hundredths behind the 7-time world champion, missing the joy of access the decisive round of qualifications. Here and there a few small errors, nothing, but if the excellent Bearman – on whom Mattia Binotto has been betting for years and is his true mentor – went so fast, it means that Ferrari is a sincere car, confident in its behavior, on which you can bet.

Red Bull, what a storm

But if we look at what happens in the back of the garage, we discover that the chaos in Red Bull increases day by day, instead of dying down. On one side (theoretically) Horner with the Thai part of the ownership, on the other (theoretically) Max Verstappen, his father, Helmut Marko and the Austrian share of the company. In the middle is poor Max which slaloms between obsessive questions and embarrassing questions. Excellent at isolating himself, at pretending nothing happened, at erasing political issues for a moment to let loose on the track. How long will it last? Will he go? And what if, just in case, sensational news was developing around the corner???