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Jeddah, 27 March 2022

Scuderia Ferrari leaves Saudi Arabia after both its drivers finished on the podium, in second and third place, thus consolidating its lead in the Constructors’ championship and with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz heading the Drivers’ classification. At the Jeddah Corniche circuit, the F1-75 proved to be reliable and a front runner.

Thrilling duel
The fight between Charles and Max Verstappen was extremely close all the way to the chequered flag: the Monegasque finished second, just 549 thousandths of a second behind the Dutchman and, but for a yellow flag at turn 1 on the penultimate lap, he might have had an answer for the reigning world champion, who had made the most of the Virtual Safety Car four laps earlier to get ahead of the Ferrari.

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Solid
As for Carlos, he delivered a solid performance. He got ahead of Sergio Perez to take third place following a perfectly executed double pit stop from the Scuderia crew – an exceptional 2”6 seconds for Charles and 2”7 for Carlos – and although the Mexican was always right behind, he never posed a real threat.

A brief break
After a long three week trip, the team can pause for breath for a few days. But as from tomorrow, back in Maranello, the data from this early part of the season will be studied carefully to see where progress can be made in extracting even more performance from the F1-75. The third round of the championship, the Australian Grand Prix, takes place on 10 April at Melbourne’s Albert Park track, an event missing from the calendar since 2019.

Charles Leclerc #16
"Although I’m disappointed to lose the victory so late in the race, it feels good to be fighting for wins again.
Whenever I had a bit of margin to Max (Verstappen), I could manage the race well. But after the Virtual Safety Car, as soon as he got in the DRS range, it became difficult.
He was fast in the straights and I was fast in the corners. You have to play on your strengths as much as possible when it’s this tight. I regained my position twice but the third time it did not work out. I could have possibly had another opportunity if it weren’t for the yellow flag at the end of the race, but that’s part of the game. It was a really fun battle!

I hope it stays this close for the coming races. It’s exciting to watch and to drive like this. Development will be key and we have to push hard."

Carlos Sainz #55
"I had a very good launch at the start but I ran out of space on the right and Max got better traction on the inside line.
From then on, the race was quite straightforward, even though I would have expected to have been given back the position ahead of Checo (Perez), as I came out of pit lane ahead of him, while the Safety Car was still out. Having to wait for the restart to get back to third meant I could not try and fight for second place..
P3 is a good result and overall, this has been a fairly positive weekend, definitely better than one week ago in Bahrain. I feel we are going in the right direction with this car and I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before we are fighting a bit further up the order. We have a clearer picture of where and what we need to improve and we have a direction to follow. I can’t wait to go to Australia after two years without racing there."

Mattia Binotto, Team Principal & Managing Director
"This evening, we were all treated to a great show with two strong drivers fighting for the win. In the end, it didn’t go our way, but once again we were competitive. It’s been a great start to the season, with 78 points scored over the two races, out of a possible total of 88. That’s definitely a significant figure and we can be pleased about it.
Charles and Carlos both did well and were clear thinking, especially at the key moments, which helped in bringing home as many points as possible. A few incidents affected the outcome, but having said that, congratulations to Max and Red Bull who were very strong today. We move on from a positive weekend and head for the next two rounds in Melbourne and Imola, where we will try to get the most out of our car."


Esteban Ocon, started P5, finished P6
"It's some good points scored again for us and I'm happy overall with my race. The fight with Fernando was enjoyable. It was hard, fair, wheel to wheel racing, which reminded me of the karting days. With these cars, you can really race and follow, which is good for the sport. It’s a shame we couldn't put both cars into the points but we're showing that we're competitive and we must continue that. It was an exciting end to the race as well just beating Lando [Norris] to the line. It felt a bit like redemption for last year!"

Fernando Alonso, started P7, finished DNF
“We don’t know what happened yet but we’ll investigate the issue tonight. We did lose a chunk of points today, but it’s good to see the car performing well tonight and all weekend. I think we deserved sixth place today and we were having a good race, so it’s bad luck we couldn’t get to the end. The battle with Esteban on track was fair, we always respect one another out there. We had some close fights in Bahrain too and always try to do the best for the team. I was a little bit faster during the race and so I made the overtake and I had to watch out for Bottas as well. We could have scored double points tonight, but we are still fourth in the championship and we go again in Australia.”

Otmar Szafnauer, Team Principal
“We have mixed feelings from today’s race and, in general, it’s another strong result, which underlines our competitiveness. It’s a great result for Esteban to finish in sixth place. He’s been solid all weekend and it’s good for him to convert a strong qualifying performance into a healthy bag of points. We do have a taste of disappointment that we were unable to put both of our cars into the points with Fernando unfortunately retiring from the race after driving very well all evening. We’re investigating the issue to see what exactly has occurred. It’s clear our car has the potential to fight for big points as demonstrated by both of our drivers tonight. We’re happy to let them race hard and fair as, in the end, having both drivers extracting the absolute maximum from the car is what we’re here to do. Everyone at the team will continue to work hard on our return to Enstone and Viry to best prepare ourselves for Formula 1’s highly anticipated return to Melbourne in two weeks’ time. Well done to everyone at the team, we’ll keep pushing!”


Valtteri Bottas #77 DNF Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN C42 (Chassis 01)
“It’s a pity to retire from what had been a really good race until that moment, especially as we were looking good for P6 at least. The engine temperatures kept rising, we need to investigate what caused that, but we had to pull the car out as we didn’t want to lose the engine. It’s how racing goes, we now need to make sure we solve whatever issue it was and move on. Looking at the positives, the car is really good. We made another step forward from the previous race, even in the starts. We were doing a good job and enjoying some close battles: now let’s make sure we get back to scoring in Australia.”

Zhou Guanyu #24 11th Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN C42 (Chassis 02)
“I want to think this was a good experience in terms of getting more confidence with street circuits in Formula One. It was useful, but overall the race was definitely far from ideal: we had the anti-stall kicking in at turn one, even though I had a much better start than in Bahrain, so we will need to understand what happened. I had made a good recovery from P18 and we were looking strong to bring home some points again, but the drive-through put us far at the back and that was it. Let’s hope for a smoother race in Australia, the car feels good so we can be competitive again.”

Frédéric Vasseur, Team Principal
“It’s a disappointing end to an evening in which we showed so much pace. We were on course to have two cars in the points again, but luck was not on our side tonight and we leave with nothing: Valtteri was stopped by a cooling issue when he was fighting for P6, while Zhou, who was recovering from the bottom after his car went into anti-stall after a contact with Ricciardo in turn two, would have been in the top ten if not for the drive-through penalty he was given. It hurts, but this is racing, sometimes, and all we have to do is pull ourselves up and make sure we keep delivering tonight’s speed at the next races.”

1. Max Verstappen (Red Bull) 1:24:19.293
2. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) + 0.549
3. Carlos Sainz jr. (Ferrari) + 8.097
4. Sergio Pérez (Red Bull) + 10.800
5. George Russell (Mercedes AMG) + 32.732
6. Esteban Ocon (Alpine) + 56.017
7. Lando Norris (McLaren) + 56.124
8. Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri) + 1:02.946
9. Kevin Magnussen (Haas) + 1:04.308
10. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes AMG) + 1:13.948
---------------------------------------------------
11. Guanyu Zhou (Alfa Romeo) + 1:22.215
12. Nico Hülkenberg (Aston Martin) + 1:31.742
13. Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) + 1 lap
14. Alexander Albon (Williams) Retired Collision with Stroll lap 47
---------------- dnf ------------------------------
NC Fernando Alonso (Alpine) Retired Mechanic lap 35
NC Daniel Ricciardo (McLaren) Retired Mechanic lap 35
NC Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo) Over heated lap 36
NC Nicholas Latifi (Williams) Crashed lap 14
Dns Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri) Car not ready
wdn Mick Schumacher(Haas) Crashed in qualifying

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