F1 LIVE: Starting positions, results and latest updates

“Let’s see, the degradation here is very different to Bahrain so maybe we don’t have the advantage on racepace. But the car performed well in high speed, we aim for another podium.

“All three tyres are a possibility, the soft gives you an advantage at the start. Hard gives you a lot of freedom in terms of statregy, we are considering all three options.

“Any trophy will mean on the podium, so I’d take any of those three!”

Sergio Perez took a surprise pole position for Sunday’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix after his Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen suffered a mechanical failure in qualifying.

Verstappen will line up only in 15th, but Perez salvaged some joy for Red Bull by beating Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to second, with Fernando Alonso third for Aston Martin.

George Russell finished fourth, but his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton qualified only eighth.

Verstappen had been the odds-on favourite to race to top spot under the lights in Jeddah after he topped all three practice sessions in his dominant Red Bull machine.

But drama struck for the Dutchman in Q2 when a suspected driveshaft issue hit his Red Bull.

Oscar Piastri starts an impressive eighth today, while Lando Norris starts P19 after he clipped the wall in qualifying yesterday.

Can the papaya get their first points of the season after a disastrous race last time out in Bahrain?

After topping the timesheets in all three practice sessions, Verstappen’s pole position looked a formality at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. But a drive shaft issue early in Q2 meant Verstappen could not set a quick time and he starts the race in P15.

Verstappen has won from low down the order before – most notably in Budapest and Spa last year – but said it will be “tough” on a narrow street track like Jeddah.

“It’s the first time I heard about it [the issue],” he told Sky F1 afterwards.

Horner, the boss at Red Bull, is the sport’s longest serving team principal having been in charge of the current world champions since 2005.

The 49-year-old executive is overseeing Red Bull’s current domination of the sport, having won both world championships at a canter last year and claiming a one-two finish at the 2023 season-opener on Sunday with Max Verstappen, the double world champion, triumphant in Bahrain.

But Ecclestone – who caused controversy last year after stating he would “take a bullet” for Russian president Vladimir Putin – insists Horner should aim for the sport’s top job next.

“If you had to pick anyone today, I’d say he [Horner] would be as good as there is,” 92-year-old Ecclestone said.

Hamilton posted only the eighth quickest time in Jeddah, 0.958 seconds adrift of Sergio Perez, who starts on pole position for Sunday’s race after Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen’s night ended prematurely with a mechanical failure. The double world champion will line up in 15th.

Fernando Alonso joins Perez on the front row for his rejuvenated Aston Martin team, with George Russell third, four tenths clear of Hamilton in the other Mercedes.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc qualified second, but he is bumped down the order with an engine penalty. It means Hamilton will start seventh.

Twenty-four races have passed since Hamilton took the last of his record 103 victories following a monumental scrap with Verstappen here in Jeddah during the finals throws of their titanic 2021 title battle.

But that triumph 469 days ago, will seem like a distant memory for Hamilton, who cast a sullen figure in the moments after an underwhelming night’s work on the Red Sea.

The Ferrari driver quaified in second but starts in P12 today due to a 10-place grid penalty…

Formula 1 is once again coming under increased scrutiny for staging races in countries with poor human rights records after the brother of a man executed in Saudi Arabia last year insisted the sport’s silence “enables violence and bloodshed.”

A fortnight after staging the opening race of the 2023 season in Bahrain, F1 returns to Jeddah for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix – a country where there have been 13 executions in the last two weeks.

Last year, 81 men were executed in one day shortly before the grand prix, with 41 from the Shia minority who had taken part in protests calling for greater political participation, according to the United Nations.

One of those men was Mustafa al-Kjayyat and his brother, Yasser al-Khayyat, insists that F1 is being used as a “tool to sportswash Saudi abuses”, in a letter seen by The Guardian addressed to F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali.

“They use the spectacle of this sporting championship to distract from the murder of my brother and hundreds of others,” he wrote. “The grand prix carrying on as normal, without even mentioning the atrocities that have just been committed on that same soil, legitimises these heinous crimes.

“Silence is complicity. It is how the regime gets away with its atrocities and suppresses calls for democratic reforms. If you truly want Formula One to be an agent for change, rather than a tool to ‘sportswash’ Saudi abuses, please end Formula One’s silence.”