Verstappen considered it unlucky that he lost the race due to a safety car intervention. Photo / Don Kennedy
Victory in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku has given Red Bull driver Sergio Perez the confidence to put himself forward as a genuine world champion contender, despite being up against his teammate, Max Verstappen, the defending world champion.
Verstappen was leading the race when his team brought him in for a pit stop as Perez was closing in for a potential overtake for the lead, given he had the benefit of DRS, whereas Verstappen didn’t.
But the pit stop was badly timed, as it coincided with Nyck de Vries coming to rest near the barriers, albeit with all four wheels still intact, triggering a safety car intervention.
His team had countered on de Vries being able to get going again, but he couldn’t, and therefore Perez and Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc, who had started from pole, both pitted under the safety car and came out ahead of Verstappen.
The latter had already passed Leclerc earlier in the race to take the lead, and now had it all to do again. Passing Leclerc again was not an issue, but getting past a determined Perez, who is becoming a street circuit racer extraordinaire, would prove impossible.
Perez went on to win his second race of the four held so far this season, with Verstappen having won the other two. It was his sixth career F1 win, but more importantly, following his victory in the sprint race held the day before his latest Grand Prix success, he is only six points behind Verstappen in the championship.
Red Bull have made it clear their drivers are free to race one another, and Perez was happy to reaffirm previous statements that he would not be in F1 if he didn’t think he couldn’t become world champion.
“A super weekend. Every single session was so critical,” Perez told Sky Sports after the race. “Very important to deliver when it mattered. Today, we executed a tremendous race. That first stint was the key to my victory.”
Asked if he believed he could beat Verstappen in the championship, the growing confidence of Perez was quite evident.
“I wouldn’t travel the world if I didn’t believe I could be world champion. Without the issues we had in qualifying in Melbourne, we should be leading the championship. It’s one thing to have the pace, but another thing not to make mistakes. It wasn’t an easy victory, but already from the first stint, we were pushing - massively - each other.”
Although many in the media might be rushing to conjure up stories of a potentially explosive and deteriorating relationship between Perez and Verstappen, the reality is that they seem to have a constructive working relationship and mutual respect.
It is not yet an intense rivalry like what we witnessed between Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, or Red Bull drivers Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber, in last two decades.
“It’s a great relationship between Max and myself. Not many people believe [it], but we are very similar,” Perez said.
“When we are on the track, we try to push each other. Max will look at my data; I’ll look at his.”
“I’m fighting for it [world championship]. But I know it’s a massive, long road ahead.”
Red Bull boss Christian Horner did have some difficulty explaining what had happened between his two championship contenders, in terms of what appeared to be a reversal of the order the team might have expected them to finish in. As Verstappen was returning to the pits, Horner was on the team radio to him.
“Yeah, well done, Max,” Horner said. “Checo was lucky with the safety car, but don’t worry Max, it’s a long, long world championship ahead. Very good points today, so great team effort.”
Horner tried to explain why Red Bull opted to pit Verstappen at a point when De Vries’ car was stalled on the track.
“At the time, we decided to pit Max because he was starting to struggle a little bit with the rears of his car and Checo was obviously right up behind him,” Horner stated.
“So, we decided from a strategy point of view it was the optimum time to make the stop. From the glimpse that we got, all four wheels were on the [de Vries] car, he hadn’t hit the barrier and the engine was running. Usually, if you see a car in the barriers here it’s a safety car, but there was no sign of it.
“Obviously, with 20/20 vision, you would have just done one more lap and [gone] from there. But you just don’t know at that point whether Charles is going to pit, and then he suddenly jumps both of them.”
Verstappen has explained how it panned out from his point of view.
“I mentioned that I was losing a limit of the rear grip of the tyres, but you can take a little bit more out of them,” he said.
“Then, of course, they called me in and the car [De Vries] stopped. I couldn’t see why he stopped, I couldn’t see that the tyre was damaged. These kind of things we’ll analyse anyway [to see] if it was the right call or not, but it was definitely unlucky.”
Leclerc hung on for third place, but was under pressure throughout the race from Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin. They would cross the finish line third and fourth respectively, separated by eight-tenths of a second.
Leclerc seemed relatively happy with his weekend’s work.
“I’m here to win, and obviously, second, third, is not what I want,” Leclerc said.
“Considering the first three races which we had, scoring six points in three races, this weekend is better. We didn’t have any problems - it was a trouble-free weekend.”
“I think Aston Martin is quicker than us and has a better car than us in race pace. Red Bull has a much better car than us in terms of race pace, and that’s where we need to make the biggest step forward.”
Alonso, who remains in third place in the championship, believes Leclerc got “lucky”.
“I think with the mediums, the Ferraris had massive degradation in the first stint. On a normal hot race, I think they will struggle a little bit more. Today was good for them, but Miami is going to be different.”
“The summary of the weekend is that Aston had a tricky Baku weekend with the DRS problems and the set-up. We were not that fast in any of the sessions and we’re still one second from the podium. Ferrari had a perfect weekend; pole position for the main race, pole position in the sprint race, super-fast car. They were just one second from the Astons, so overall, we have to be happy.”
There was some last-lap drama in the race as a couple of drivers pitted for fresh tyres to gain one point for setting the fastest lap of the race. One of those was George Russell in the Mercedes, who did set the fastest lap and finished eighth. The other was Esteban Ocon in the Alpine.
As the Red Bull mechanics headed towards the pit wall to celebrate the team’s third one-two finish for their team, photographers and other FIA personnel crowded into the pitlane. Ocon came in for his last-minute pit stop and had to slam on his brakes as people scrambled out of his way.
“This is a shambles,” Sky Sports commentator David Croft yelled into his microphone.
“Absolute shambles, we could see it coming, Alpine could see it coming, what is going on!” Sky Sports pit lane reporter Ted Kravitz echoed.
“That is a total and utter shambles of organisation and somebody should have known,” Croft added.
Ocon called it a “scary moment”, and the FIA reacted by summoning those responsible for the parc ferme to the race stewards to discuss the incident. The result was a call for “immediate steps” to be taken to avoid a repeat of such an incident.
There won’t be long to wait to see if the parc ferme rules have been tightened up, as the next race is this weekend in Miami. Spare a thought for the logistical nightmare the teams have in packing up the cars and all the equipment and getting everything from eastern Europe to Miami in the US - in just three days.
F1 is a pressure-cooked environment, and so too might be the championship battle. It is easy to say Red Bull is going to win the Constructors’ title after just four races, having taken nearly maximum points so far. The question is, do we have a genuine battle for the driver’s title between Verstappen and Perez? The latter would like you to think so, while the former will believe he was just unlucky, which is a view shared by Horner.
The race in Baku was described as “boring” by Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, who claims an assessment needs to be made, because “even if you are within 0.2 seconds, it was very difficult to overtake, it was nearly impossible to overtake unless the other driver makes a mistake”.
Perez was most likely the happiest driver to leave Baku, and gets to try to add to his Baku success again this weekend. Last year in Miami, Verstappen beat the Ferraris of Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, with Perez fourth, and you sense he’d be happy with a repeat of that result this Sunday to put some more points between himself and Perez in the championship.