Sergio Perez wins another street race following a strong drive at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, assuming the lead from Formula 1 team-mate Max Verstappen after the safety car pitstops.
The Red Bull driver took advantage of a pitstop under the safety car to emerge in the lead after Verstappen had led the early phases of the race from polesitter Charles Leclerc.
Leclerc led away at the start line from Verstappen and, without DRS being made available in the opening series of laps, was able to hold a scant lead over the two-time champion.
But at the end of the third lap, Verstappen breezed past the Ferrari driver thanks to the great speed advantage of his Red Bull with DRS active, and led into the first corner of the fourth lap.
Leclerc quickly fell out of range and was soon easy pickings for Perez, who then immediately began to chase after Verstappen in his efforts to secure a second career victory at the Baku circuit.
Perez had homed to within DRS range of Verstappen, but the race was interrupted to pause the sprint race winner’s progress when Nyck de Vries crunched his front-left wheel against the inside wall at Turn 6, and stopped on track.
Verstappen pitted in response, but the emergence of a lap 11 safety car as the marshals tried to clear de Vries’ stranded AlphaTauri ensured that his side of the garage had somewhat mistimed the call – the safety car emerging when Verstappen was exiting the pitlane.
This gave Perez and Leclerc the chance to take cheaper pitstops under the safety car, allowing them to emerge from the pitlane in front of Verstappen once they’d collected their fresh hard tyres.
Although Leclerc tried to take a look at Perez on the restart, sticking with the leader, he could not keep Verstappen from blasting past at Turn 3 to assume second place.
But Perez had broken clear of DRS range, crucially ensuring that Verstappen could not employ the powerful rear wing against his own team-mate.
Perez and Verstappen then began to trade blows, and a tug of war over the fastest lap ensued – but the gap began to slowly open in Perez’s favour, particularly when Verstappen started to complain of a lack of balance between his differential and engine braking.
By the end of lap 36, Perez was clocking in with laps in the one minute, 44 seconds, with Verstappen still mired in the one minute, 45 seconds to help the driver’s lead grow to 2.5 seconds – which broke the three-second mark two laps later as Perez continued his impressive pace.
Continuing to set the pace, Perez got the gap up to 3.6 seconds but lost 0.6 seconds to Verstappen in trying to lap the twice-stopped Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas, forcing him to bolster his defences in the following lap with another series of quick laps.
The difference between the two was at its zenith at 3.7 seconds, which Perez felt was enough to secure the victory – and began to back off, crossing the line with 2.1 seconds for his second win of 2023.
Verstappen went in search of the fastest lap point, although the reigning champion duly delivered the quickest lap, Fernando Alonso swiped the point away provisionally until Verstappen set a one minute, 44.474 seconds.
But Alonso, undeterred, went two tenths quicker than his fellow two-time champion to add to his points tally while trying to hunt down Leclerc.
Alonso was 0.8 seconds off Leclerc by the end, missing out on a fourth consecutive third place, as the Monegasque managed to shake off the Ferrari’s greater tyre degradation to ensure he could convert pole into a podium.
Alonso had earlier made up ground at the restart with an audacious move down the inside of Carlos Sainz at Turn 4, and Sainz finished 23.4 seconds behind his countryman after multiple discussions over strategy were aired on the television feed.
Lewis Hamilton dispatched Lance Stroll to take sixth, while George Russell – after a good start to the race – fell behind his team-mate and the Aston Martin driver at the restart and struggled to keep tabs with the pair ahead.
The Briton instead elected to call in and bolt on the soft tyres, swiping the fastest lap point away from Alonso.
Lando Norris had spent most of the race sat behind Nico Hulkenberg, who did a long stint on the hard tyre, but eventually broke past the Haas driver to move up into the points – which became ninth when the similarly late-stopping Esteban Ocon called in on the penultimate lap.
This elevated Yuki Tsunoda into the points to ensure AlphaTauri could double his season’s points tally – 2.6 seconds clear of Oscar Piastri.
It wasn’t the most thrilling race at Baku but this was a commanding victory for Sergio Perez. He won the sprint race the previous day and now, Checo is a winner again in the main Grand Prix. Solid result for the driver and Red Bull Racing with this 1-2 finish.
Azerbaijan Grand Prix, race results:
1 Sergio Perez Red Bull 1:32:42.436
2 Max Verstappen Red Bull +2.137s
3 Charles Leclerc Ferrari +21.217
4 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin +22.024s
5 Carlos Sainz Ferrari +45.491s
6 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes +46.145s
7 Lance Stroll Aston Martin +51.617s
8 George Russell Mercedes +74.240s
9 Lando Norris McLaren +80.376s
10 Yuki Tsunoda AlphaTauri +83.862s
11 Oscar Piastri McLaren +86.501s
12 Alex Albon Williams +88.623s
13 Kevin Magnussen Haas +89.729s
14 Pierre Gasly Alpine +91.332s
15 Esteban Ocon Alpine +97.794s
16 Logan Sargeant Williams +100.943s
17 Nico Hulkenberg Haas +1 lap
18 Valtteri Bottas Alfa Romeo +1 lap
Zhou Guanyu Alfa Romeo DNF
Nyck de Vries AlphaTauri DNF
Azerbaijan Grand Prix race review as reported by Formula1.com.
Sergio Perez doubled up on the streets of Baku by adding to his Sprint race triumph with victory in Sunday’s drama-filled Azerbaijan Grand Prix, leading Red Bull team mate Max Verstappen and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc home to boost his title push.
Verstappen and Perez overhauled pole-sitter Leclerc in the early stages and proceeded to trade fastest lap times at the head of the field, with the defining moment of the race coming when a Safety Car was deployed either side of the Red Bull drivers pitting.
With Verstappen pitting under yellow flags brought out when Nyck de Vries stopped on track, and Perez coming in under a Safety Car that followed, the Mexican cleared his team mate and rejoined the action in the lead.
Verstappen fell to third, meaning he had to overtake Leclerc for a second time. While that was a formality when the race resumed, he could not make inroads on Perez during the run to the chequered flag and had to settle for second.
Leclerc held off a late charge from Fernando Alonso to take third, meaning the two-time champion’s 2023 podium run came to an end – though fourth still represented another strong haul of points for the Aston Martin driver.
Carlos Sainz crossed the line fifth in the other Ferrari, fending off Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes in the closing stages, with the Aston Martin of Lance Stroll and Silver Arrow of George Russell picking up minor points after a close call in the pits early on.
Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg rose from the pit lane to hold points-paying positions for much of the race, as they extended their first stints on hard tyres, but late mandatory pit stops meant they were banking on more Safety Car drama that never arrived.
Lando Norris moved into the points with a late move on Hulkenberg, before gaining another spot when Ocon pitted, while Yuki Tsunoda rounded out the top 10 to salvage a result for AlphaTauri on an otherwise difficult day for the team.
Oscar Piastri, Alex Albon, Kevin Magnussen and Pierre Gasly all narrowly missed out on points as they completed a close midfield pack, ahead of final finishers Ocon, Logan Sargeant, Hulkenberg and Valtteri Bottas – the latter making three trips to the pit lane amid tyre woes.
Bottas’ Alfa Romeo team mate, Zhou Guanyu, pulled into the pits late on with an unspecified technical issue, with De Vries the other retirement after he hit the wall at Turn 5 in the early stages and picked up terminal damage.
With back-to-back Baku wins, which add to his 2021 Grand Prix victory at the venue, Perez cuts Verstappen’s championship lead to single figures heading to the next round of the season in Miami, which follows in a week’s time.
Perez, who also took home the Driver of the Day award, could have made up further ground in the drivers’ standings had it not been for a late stop from Russell, who bolted on a set of softs to grab the fastest lap bonus point.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.perez-leads-red-bull-one-two-in-dramatic-azerbaijan-gp-to-cut-verstappens.3UgBHOtrbFlmDdYEixNuDR.html
Red Bull Formula 1 driver Sergio Perez admitted he was lucky his car’s front right corner “didn’t blow up” after hitting the wall on his victory romp in Baku.
Perez led Max Verstappen home after a tepid Azerbaijan Grand Prix, but his afternoon nearly came undone when on lap 34 he clipped the outside wall on the entry to Turn 15.
The Mexican came away unscathed but afterwards admitted his error led to a hard thump on the right-front corner of his Red Bull RB19.
“Really hard,” he said about the hit. “I had a bit of luck, especially with the front right that it didn’t blow up.”
Starting from third, Perez quickly dispatched Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and then took the lead when Verstappen pitted on lap 10, just before the safety car came out for Nyck de Vries’ stricken AlphaTauri.
Perez benefitted from the neutralisation to complete his only pitstop and remain in the lead.
And after controlling the restart the Mexican put in a composed drive on the Baku City Circuit, never coming under sustained pressure from Verstappen.
“It really worked out today for us. We managed to stay in the DRS train and we managed to keep the pressure on Max,” Perez said.
“I think we had a better deg on that first stint, it was looking good already from that side.
“Then the safety car came and bunched everyone up. So, it was again another race on the hard tyres.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/perez-lucky-his-f1-car-didnt-blow-up-after-hitting-baku-wall/10463175/
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc says Red Bull is in “another league” after the polesitter was relegated to third by Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen in Formula 1’s 2023 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Friday and Saturday qualifying topper Leclerc had launched cleanly to comfortably hold off front-row rival Verstappen into Turn 1 at the race start.
But the Ferrari driver was then left vulnerable as DRS was activated at the start of lap three of 51, with the chasing defending champion cutting the 0.4-second gap before using the overtaking aid to pass over the line.
A compliant Leclerc was then deposed to his eventual third place at the start of lap six, as victor Perez did similar to his team-mate by activating DRS to overtake on the inside run to Turn 1.
As Perez and Verstappen pushed each other in the battle for the win, Leclerc fell 21.217s behind the lead duo come the chequered flag, although he pipped fourth-placed Fernando Alonso by 0.8s.
This margin left Leclerc to declare that Red Bull remain in “another league” to Ferrari when it comes to race pace, with the Monegasque also having ceded the lead to Perez in the Saturday sprint race.
Leclerc said: “[Red Bull] are in another league once it comes to [the] race. Over 51 laps, it was just not possible. They have so much more pace than we do in race pace.
“I think they found something that we didn’t yet. That’s where our focus is at the moment, everybody’s working flat out to try and understand what we can do in the races, especially to just get more performance.”
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/leclerc-red-bull-another-league-baku-f1-1-2/10463188/