Sergio Perez (Pole, P4, 12 pts): 9/10
In the past, it's taken Sergio Perez time to get up to speed at a circuit and come anywhere close to matching his Red Bull team mate Max Verstappen for pace. That seemed to be the run of things again in Jeddah where he was almost seven tenths off the Dutch driver's best time in FP1. Even when that gap narrowed in FP2 and again in FP3, no one was pegging Perez for pole - after all, he'd never managed it in any of his prior 214 race starts. Qualifying looked like it was going the way of Carlos Sainz, but in the final minutes of Q3 Charles Leclerc seemed to have snatched it away when a surprisingly sluggish lap from Verstappen proved insufficient. And then from nowhere came Perez, a one in a thousand performance (his words) making him the first Mexican ever to start a Formula 1 Grand Prix from pole. In the race, he was able to brilliantly parry an attack from Leclerc into the first corner, and he maintained the lead until the strange decision to stop for fresh tyres on lap 15. Was he bluffed into it by Ferrari's feint, or was that always the plan as he insisted later? Either way, the scrambling of a safety car minutes later cost Perez dear and after the restart he was down in fourth place behind Sainz, which is where he remained for the rest of the race. Even so he didn't appear too downbeat - and nor should he - as he celebrated Verstappen's victory with the rest of the Red Bull squad.
Carlos Sainz (P3, 15 pts): 8.5/10
Ferrari continue to look very strong this season, confirming their excellent pace in Bahrain with another super-competitive showing in Saudi Arabia. Carlos Sainz will have been frustrated to see his team mate Charles Leclerc sweep all three practice sessions (even FP2, where both Ferraris hit the wall and finished the session early) with an average margin of three tenths over Sainz. Sainz redoubled his efforts in qualifying and had an impressive first and second rounds, going faster than Leclerc and indeed everyone else. But when it came to the final top ten pole shoot-out it was Leclerc was was back on top - right up until Sergio Perez produced a spectacular final run to dramatically snatch the top spot. That left Sainz starting in third, and he lost out at the start to Verstappen. When Perez was the first of the leaders to make his pit stop on lap 15 followed by a safety car, Sainz was convinced he was ahead of the Red Bull coming out of pit exit. It took a long review of the telemetry and video evidence by race control before Perez was told to hand back third to Sainz following the restart. That's where Sainz spent the rest of the race, watching the duelling Leclerc and Verstappen gradually pull away in front while ensuring Perez never had the opportunity to fight back from behind. The result was a second back-to-back podium in a week, but Sainz would have preferred to have shown he could match Leclerc let alone take the fight to Verstappen.
