Verstappen was on track to take pole for Red Bull after setting two purple sectors in his final qualifying round only to run wide on the final corner and hit the wall.
This made Verstappen third on the grid behind the Mercedes couple Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, which served as an important moment in the closing stages of his title fight against Hamilton.
Pole-sitter Hamilton is eight points behind Verstappen at the top of the drivers ‘standings, while Mercedes is only five points ahead of Red Bull in the constructors’ championship two remaining races.
Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff admitted after qualifying that the team “was clearly not fast enough today” and that the cars were at best good enough for starting positions two and three.
“The drivers probably outperformed the car and Max would have been on pole by almost half a second,” said Wolff.
“So this is something that we have to analyze because it is not what we expected.
“Max’s fall on the last lap puts us in a happier position with one and two on the grid.
“But that’s for today and I think we can count ourselves lucky in this situation. The race is a completely different game again. “
Mercedes surprised in qualifying with 1: 2 after Verstappen’s shunt
Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images
Mercedes had been rated dominant in Jeddah due to the high speed of the track, but Red Bull showed a similar pace throughout the weekend.
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner claimed on Friday that the new route in Jeddah is tighter than expected, which means raw horsepower is not that important.
Wolff admitted after qualifying that he “was a bit surprised that we didn’t have the pace on the straights today or overall this weekend”.
He noted that Red Bull drove with reduced drag in qualifying, but couldn’t put the gap down to a single reason.
“I think we’re pretty much even on the straights,” said Wolff.
“But we lost at high speed [corners], but also in qualifying the drivers were not at all satisfied with the car at low speed.
“It’s between understeer, snapping, jacking, rolling, whatever.”
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