Oracle Red Bull Racing Team Principal and CEO Christian Horner says that has been a phenomenal 2023 Formula One season for the Milton Keynes-based outfit.
The team has dominated the championship with Max Verstappen taking his third consecutive Drivers championship while Red Bull claimed their third Constructors title in a row.
Max Verstappen claimed his 12th pile of the season and the 32nd of his career, which puts him equal with 1992 champion Nigel Mansell.
Sergio Perez starts Sunday’s 53 lap Abu Dhabi Grand Prix from ninth place and speaking following the action on Saturday, Christian Horner said:
Its been a phenomenal season so far, lets see if we can bring that home tomorrow.
“Final qualifying of the season and it was certainly a good one. Both drivers performed very well. Checo was unfortunate at the very end with track limits but its a good track to overtake here and he will take every opportunity tomorrow. For Max, it was a text book drive, his 4th consecutive pole here, its a great summation of his year. Obviously this sets us up well as we head into our last race. Its been a phenomenal season so far, lets see if we can bring that home tomorrow.”
Max Verstappen who set a time of 01:23.445s and speaking following the action he said:
We’ll try to have a good start tomorrow, focus on our own race and hopefully end the season on a high.
I’m very happy to be on pole, I didn’t expect it. The weekend so far has been a bit tricky but we definitely improved the car for Qualifying, we did everything we could. From lap one the RB19 seemed more together and we could definitely push more, it felt miles better than in practice. It’s been a very special season, we’ve been enjoying it a lot and we’re really proud of what we’ve achieved. We’ll try to have a good start tomorrow, focus on our own race and hopefully end the season on a high.”
Sergio Perez says that the aim from ninth on the grid is to claim a podium finish and speaking after qualifying he said:
The podium will be the target tomorrow, no one really has much information on how they will perform in the race so we will see.
Things were looking really good, we had a very competitive Q1 and Q2, but unfortunately, we ended up not putting things together in Q3 and it made it worse that we got the lap deleted. It was a little bit of a disaster with the scrub set of tyres, we had an issue with the driveability and then unfortunately I got caught out by track limits. I had a moment coming out of turn one and that made it really difficult for me to get a lap together, it wasn’t a very clean lap in the end. The podium will be the target tomorrow, no one really has much information on how they will perform in the race so we will see, as I always say, anything can happen.”