The pilots who compete in the Formula One World Championship were gathered until after two in the morning this Saturday to see whether or not they disputed the Formula One Saudi Arabian Grand Prix after the missile attack that an oil facility suffered in the vicinity -about 15 kilometers- of the Jeddah circuit, venue of the second round of the championship; before confirming that they would.
After the Italian Stefano Domenicali, F1’s top manager, assured that the Grand Prix was going to take place as “planned”, the drivers and team directors met for more than two hours at the Jeddah circuit . Once the team leaders left the room where everyone was gathered, the pilots continued debating until after two in the morning on Saturday (midnight, in Spanish peninsular time; 23:00 GMT on Friday) to see if they continued in Arabia or if, on the contrary, they stood up and did not dispute the Grand Prix.
The owner of the McLaren team, the American Zak Brown, told ‘As’ that the Grand Prix would take place; since finally, the pilots, some of them quite annoyingHowever, they decided that it should be so, according to what was reported from Jeddah by the aforementioned Madrid sports newspaper. Shortly after, the Mexican Sergio Pérez (Red Bull), fourth in the last World Cup -which was won by his Dutch teammate Max Verstappen- and who set the fourth time in free practice on Friday, confirmed that the Grand Prix would be run, through a well-known social network. “Ready and with all the focus on tomorrow’s qualifying,” Guadalajaran ‘Checo’ Pérez, 32, who is facing his twelfth season in F1, a category in which he has two victories and fifteen podiums.
The Monegasque Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), leader of the World Cup after having won last Sunday in Bahrain, had set the best time in free practice on Friday. A day that Verstappen finished second, ahead of the Spanish Carlos Sainz, partner of the pilot of the principality of the Cote d’Azur in the ‘Scuderia’ and who finished second in the first race of the year, in Sakhir.