Red Bull boss backs Max Verstappen to challenge ‘very rounded’ Oscar Piastri

Christian Horner knows Max Verstappen is up against a “very rounded” competitor in Oscar Piastri but is encouraged by Red Bull’s performance in Saudi Arabia.

Verstappen started on pole but was handed a five-second penalty for cutting the corner to stay ahead of Piastri at turn one, allowing the Australian to take the lead at the pit stops.

He went on to a comfortable win and with it assumed the lead of the drivers’ championship for the first time in his career, overtaking team-mate Lando Norris.

Verstappen’s Red Bull future had dominated pre-race talk in Jeddah after a tough weekend in Bahrain but he delivered a stunning pole lap and showed strong race pace.

Horner knows that Piastri, who now leads Norris by 10 points with Verstappen two further back, is tough opposition for the four-time world champion.

“I think he is very strong, very strong mentally, pace wise. He looks very rounded,” Horner said of Piastri.

“Oscar has won three races to Lando’s one. He looks like the driver in form at this moment in time.

“He is now the leader of the championship. Had Max have won he would have been leading the championship so things move around pretty quickly.

“There’s an awful lot of positives that we can take out of the weekend. The frustrating thing is I thought we had them beat today and unfortunately a really marginal call at the first chicane has been the difference.

“That was probably our most competitive race of the year to date in terms of raw pace.”

Piastri secured back-to-backs wins and now has three from the opening five races, becoming the first Australian to lead the championship since Mark Webber in 2010.

The unflappable 24-year-old delivered another faultless weekend while Norris, who finished fourth, paid the price for starting from 10th after crashing out of final qualifying.

Piastri completed a stunning overtake on Lewis Hamilton on his out-lap after pitting, going off line to surge round the outside of the Ferrari.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella says he had no worries about his driver in that moment.

“Personally I did not have any kind of exciting moment there. He was very confident, he was very in control of the situation and he knew corner one was his chance,” Stella said.

“Today for me was like Baku (last season). In Baku it was very tense if you remember with (Charles) Leclerc but somehow I was very calm because it’s one of those in which you know that Oscar is in control and he knows very well what he is doing.”