Max Verstappen reflects on 'smart tricks' needed to beat Charles Leclerc in Saudi Arabia

Max Verstappen said that it wasn’t easy playing smart tricks at the end of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix but eventually he was pleased to get the overtake done on Charles Leclerc to win the race.

The Red Bull and Ferrari drivers once again went up against each other, as they did in Bahrain, for the race victory and this time it was Max who came out on top.

A first attempt at taking the lead saw him into P1 just at the DRS detection line, and that meant Leclerc could roar back past him down the start/finish straight.

After a couple more goes at sizing things up, though, Verstappen managed to get the move done into turn one, with the help of DRS, as we saw a different kind of racing introduced where both drivers wanted to avoid leading into the DRS zone.

Max, in the end, was happy to take victory and he reflected on the battle post-race:

“Yeah, it seems like once you get quite close, when you get within half a second, you actually can have a good exit.

“And I think that makes it a lot more tricky to actually do the pass, let’s say in the last corner compared to last year, so it’s a lot harder to plan your pass.

“It wasn’t easy playing smart tricks in the last corner but eventually I managed to get ahead.

“But then even after that he was constantly in the DRS and then with the yellow flags in the last lap, just knowing how much you should lift, whether it’s allowed or not.

“It was a really tough but a good race. We’re battling hard in the front and we just started to play the long game.

“They were really quick through corners; we were quick on the straight, but the tyres were wearing out quite quick around here.

“You could see the end I think, we had a little bit more pace, so I just tried to get by. It was tough, but really