How Perez profited in Baku to lay down his F1 title fight credentials

It’s not uncommon for drivers to have “their” circuit. Monaco served as such for Graham Hill and Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher had the tricky Magny-Cours circuit wrapped around his finger, and Lewis Hamilton enjoys demigod status at Silverstone.

But Baku is Sergio Perez’s track, and it has been ever since it joined the Formula 1 calendar. In that first race in 2016, Perez qualified second, started seventh thanks to a penalty, and worked his way up to third in an unfancied Force India.

He’d won in Baku before, famously benefiting from Lewis Hamilton’s ‘brake magic’ finger trouble on the late race standing restart in 2021, to chalk up his first victory at Red Bull. He was second in last year’s edition, albeit beaten by Max Verstappen after a slow pitstop allowed his team-mate the opportunity to undercut him.

The Mexican’s key attribute here has been in finding confidence throughout the 90-degree corner entries around the unpredictable road surface, dialling in enough balance to ensure the front end can turn in and the rear end can follow his lead.

But prior form was not necessarily on Perez’s side. Sure, he has a grand prix win this season, but he needed Verstappen to be bogged down with a grid penalty to make his passage to victory in Jeddah easier. A fifth in Melbourne was the fruit of a damage limitation exercise after a pitlane start, as Verstappen’s path to victory was largely untroubled – late restart notwithstanding. Now, with no penalties in the offing, Perez would have to beat Verstappen on merit to continue his outstanding record in the Azerbaijani capital.

Plus, there was the interesting statistic that nobody has ever won twice at the Baku circuit. Sure, there was a sample size of just six races, but the organisers wanted to bring the self-proclaimed “Baku syndrome” to light to underline just how unpredictable the races are. But Perez would have delighted in the notion of predictability, so long as he was the main beneficiary.

In qualifying, however, Red Bull’s streak had come to an end as Charles Leclerc continued his phenomenal one-lap form in Baku to notch up a third consecutive pole. But the Monegasque was particularly unconfident of remaining in the lead for long, having been dispatched in the sprint race swiftly after the safety car restart. Perez booked himself a spot on the second row, a tenth behind Verstappen, despite having been almost 0.3 seconds up on Leclerc through the opening sector. The Ferrari was dynamite in the second sector, while Perez and Verstappen rather lost their momentum in the Old City section by comparison.

Leclerc claimed pole for both the sprint race and grand prix in Azerbaijan, but couldn't hold back the Red Bull charge

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

But the issues with tyre preservation that Ferrari has endured so far in 2023 was certainly on Red Bull’s radar. Thus, it was aware that it needed to get its drivers past Leclerc in relatively short order. Leclerc preserved the lead at the start and Verstappen stayed in touch, having not faced the same difficulties getting off the line as he did in the sprint, which had put him into a contretemps with George Russell. Perez followed his team-mate through the opening laps, both hermetically sealed to Leclerc’s gearbox as the Ferrari driver struggled to pull away.

Verstappen waited until DRS became available, Leclerc batting away the faintest whiff of an attack on the second lap and retaining the lead for the start of the third. But the gap was a scant 0.4s between the two, and Verstappen was now imbued with DRS at the start of the lap. Verstappen had a little look on the run to Turn 3, but decided discretion was the better part of valour and held out for the end of the 2.2-kilometre Neftchilar Avenue straight. The die was cast at this juncture and, once DRS was open, Verstappen had about 30km/h (19mph) in hand over Leclerc to swoop past for the lead.

Verstappen was heading out of the final corner when his compatriot Nyck de Vries bundled into the inside wall at Turn 5. Red Bull beckoned Verstappen into the pitlane and, unbeknown to it at the time, handing Perez control

Leclerc managed to stay within DRS range for the straight between Turns 2 and 3, keeping pace with Verstappen to ensure Perez’s job was made harder on the next two laps, but it proved only a matter of time before Leclerc no longer had the straightline speed to ward off the #11 car. Perez was through and up to second, and had done so having dropped to only 1.3s behind his team-mate.

“That was key because, once Max got by, I knew that it was really important not to lose too much time with Charles,” Perez explained after the race. “If I were to lose too much time to Max, it would be really difficult to catch him. Luckily I managed to spend just [two] laps behind Charles and once I was able to clear him, then lap by lap, I got into the DRS from Max. And that really made my race; once I was in his DRS [range] it was about time to overtake him. But then he pitted…”

Once Leclerc had been dropped by the Red Bull duo, Perez became the quicker of the RB19s. It took just three laps for him to get within the golden one second of Verstappen and rifled in a lap 0.5s quicker on the ninth tour to sit pretty in his team-mate's wheeltracks. “I’m sliding,” Verstappen reported over the radio once Perez occupied his mirrors, and Red Bull readied to bring the Dutchman in for a set of hard tyres.

Verstappen was heading out of the final corner when his compatriot Nyck de Vries bundled into the inside wall at Turn 5, knocking his front-left steering arm out of whack and coming to rest at the smidgen of run-off at Turn 6. Red Bull beckoned Verstappen into the pitlane and, unbeknown to it at the time, handing Perez control.

Just as Verstappen exited the pitlane, the safety car was called into action. Perez could now respond to his team-mate's stop with a considerably cheaper trip to the pitlane, and duly did so to collect his own set of hard-compound Pirellis. To add further insult to injury, Verstappen fell behind Leclerc once again and forced him into having to round the Ferrari once again.

Verstappen led initially before a safety car caused by de Vries allowed Perez to take control

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“I saw that there was a car stopped, I thought he maybe just locked up,” Verstappen reflected afterwards. “In hindsight, I mean, I can't see that, but it's something to review. I mean, clearly you could see there was one wheel damaged, and it looked like he was not going to drive that anyway back to the pits, even if he would've reversed. So, it’s something to look at, because of course that then did hurt my race after that.”

Leclerc did not factor for long after the lap 14 restart; although the polesitter stuck with Perez once the field had accelerated away under green flag conditions, the leader covered off the inside and made it difficult for Leclerc to take the optimal line through the opening corner.

Verstappen, meanwhile, advanced through Turn 1 with great pace and immediately sat on Leclerc’s tail through the next turn. This drew them side by side on the straight, and Verstappen assumed the inside line for Turn 3 to reclaim second at Leclerc’s expense.

When the Ferrari roadblock had been moved aside the first time, Perez felt confident enough to charge up to Verstappen but, with roles reversed, the latter of the two could not quite gather the same momentum. Perez instead sat 1.5s clear of Verstappen and, despite the reigning champion chipping away small fragments of time in a bid to enter his team-mate's DRS space, Perez was able to switch it on when he needed to.

It wasn’t for the lack of trying on Verstappen’s part that the arrears could not be addressed, but rather that Perez had the wherewithal to respond every time the gap became even slightly tentative. This caused Verstappen to start to use more tyre life than he’d anticipated, particularly early on when facing the wake of the car in front. In particular, the second sector was much harder for Verstappen to manage while following Perez, with the tight complex of corners leading into the fast and sweeping curves around the city walls much more difficult to navigate in the turbulent air.

This didn’t stop the two from dominating the fastest lap chart, trading blows between each other, but each punch that Perez was able to strike proved more decisive than those Verstappen could throw. Between laps 21 and 28, the gap started to grow piecemeal in Perez’s favour, until a poor 29th trip around the circuit for Verstappen pushed the delta up to 2.3s.

Verstappen pinned that issue on a lack of balance between his differential and engine braking, and explained after the race that he was playing with the functions on his steering wheel to bring the handling of the car closer to his liking.

With the order reversed after the safety car, Perez was able to defend his lead against Verstappen

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

He cited that he was lacking the “confidence needed on entry to the mid-corner,” but that his work on the steering wheel had eventually yielded a “compromise” that bestowed him with car closer to what he’d hoped for. Nevertheless, at this stage, he elected to settle in behind Perez for the time being and hope that an opportunity to close the gap could emerge later.

Verstappen’s main hope was for Perez to make some kind of mistake. After all, the Guadalajara-born driver had been playing fast and loose with the walls around Turn 15, sustaining a slide and barely missing the Tecpro barrier on the exit with his right-rear wheel. That Perez sustained a minor clip of his right-front on the entry to Turn 15, suggesting that it even was a benefit, underlined that fate could not even intervene on his path to victory. Admitting after the race that it was a “really hard” hit to the wheel, he caught the wall with the face of the tyre rim.

"It was one of those moments where you drop a bit of concentration – and in this place you cannot" Sergio Perez

“It actually helped me!” Perez laughed. “I was struggling with the front end and somehow I picked up a bit of front end, so it’s something to [look at]. But honestly, I was quite concerned because the paranoia starts, you start to look at the tyre and my engineer asked me what happened. And it was just looking at everything, [luckily] it was OK with the tyre.

“It was one of those moments where you drop a bit of concentration – and in this place you cannot, it doesn't matter where you are in the race, lose any concentration at all.”

But it never quite came together for Verstappen. With about 15 of the 51 laps to go, the deficit on each lap began to grow; Perez was up to 2.7s ahead, then three, then 3.5, and only dropped down to three seconds again when lapping a two-stopping Valtteri Bottas. Once Perez had rebuilt his advantage to 3.7s by the end of the 46th lap, he reckoned that was enough of a buffer to ease off in the last five tours.

At this point, Verstappen’s mind was on the fastest lap point, but he hadn’t bargained on Fernando Alonso attempting to do the same. The Aston Martin driver had made up good ground, most notably with his post-restart overtake on Carlos Sainz at Turn 4, hardly a much-fancied passing spot, and was attempting to close in on Leclerc to secure a fourth successive third-place finish.

Alonso was 3.5s behind Leclerc with five laps remaining, with the AMR23’s race pace superior to that of the SF-23 ahead. Alonso was most likely not even trying to get the fastest lap, but it was a by-product of his last-gasp chase to taste more sparkling wine on the podium.

With Perez able to edge clear, Verstappen accepted his fate in the closing stages

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Verstappen punched in a 1m44.566s on lap 48, but Alonso was a fraction quicker. A lap later, Verstappen’s 1m44.474s was smashed by a lap over two tenths faster from Alonso. In the meantime, Verstappen had cut the gap to Perez to 2.8s with one more lap remaining, but it wouldn’t be enough – this was Perez’s day, and he’d done it by beating Verstappen on merit and with another Baku masterclass.

“We delivered when we had to,” Perez gushed, his Red Bull overalls drenched in bollicine. “It was a lot of pressure, I felt that with this [sprint] format, it puts a lot of stress on the drivers, on the engineers, the mechanics. So the way we delivered over the weekend was great. Yesterday we executed a good race. And the way we pushed each other, Max and myself, pretty much from lap one onwards, we really gave it our all lap after lap.”

Leclerc held onto third, 21s behind Perez, despite the mounting pressure from Alonso. Before the Spaniard’s fastest lap exploits, Leclerc initially had the benchmark time, but was forced into struggling around in the 1m46s thereafter to allow the Aston Martin to close in much quicker than expected.

But it had been a day of tyre management for the polesitter once again; while his performances over one lap had been stellar, stringing 51 of them together without draining life from the tyres was an altogether tougher ask for anyone contending with this year’s Ferrari.

“We have to [manage] with our car, otherwise we kill the tyres and then we cannot get them back,” Leclerc mused. “This has a big influence on our performance. So I think we did the perfect management today. But we are just not quick enough…”

Alonso couldn’t help throwing a few barbs at his former team, unsentimentally suggesting that “on a bad weekend, let's say for an Aston, we are fighting for the podium against one of the best weekends for Ferrari”.

Once again, the double champion demonstrated his stunning bandwidth for reading the race, offering suggestions about when to push Lewis Hamilton in the early phases as he spotted the Mercedes’ rear tyres graining. He later chimed in with brake bias suggestions for Lance Stroll to use in his battle against the Mercedes cars, earning him a hug from the Canadian in the press pen.

Alonso's 100% podium rate at the start of the season came to an end, but he still starred on track for Aston

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

When it came to it, Alonso didn’t need to press Hamilton as the Briton pitted a lap before Verstappen had. After some mithering on the radio over lost positions, Hamilton got his head down and supplanted team-mate Russell – whose quick thinking to pass Stroll on the pitlane entry under the safety car was undone by a slow restart. Still, the Norfolk native earned a reprieve after bolting on softs at the end to steal the fastest lap from Verstappen and Alonso.

Hamilton had dispatched Stroll on lap 19 and soon began to give chase to Sainz. Although he spent the rest of the run-time stuck behind the Ferrari as the W14 struggled to mount a charge with DRS, Hamilton admitted to enjoying the battle with the Madrid-born racer.

“I think today shows that the hunger is there. And once I get that confidence in that car, the pace will come out,” he remarked. “I couldn't get bogged down in that frustration – I just had to keep my head down and get focused on attacking. And that's what I did – I got right back in the race, and I really enjoyed those battles.”

"I think it's a long way ahead but I really believe we are in the fight. I think without the problems we had in qualifying in Melbourne, we should be a lot closer" Sergio Perez

For Perez, there is no question of hunger; he’s performing at the highest level we’ve ever seen him at in F1. When you consider that he was almost out of a seat when 2020 was drawing to a close, he’s starting to really make the most of his Red Bull opportunity. With a sprint and a grand prix win in Baku, he sits just six points behind Verstappen.

A false dawn? Perhaps, but at this current time, Red Bull has an intra-team fight for supremacy to work with. Even though there are many who would doubt Perez’s championship credentials, especially taking into account the driver next to him in the garage, the man himself does not harbour such apprehension.

“I think it's a long way ahead but, you know, I really believe that we are in the fight. I think without the problems we had in qualifying in Melbourne, we should be a lot closer. So it's important not to have those problems ever again. I think at the end of the day, it's just very important to make sure that whenever we cannot win, we finish second. It's a good day still.”

A near-perfect performance from Perez in Baku, but can he sustain it into a title challenge?

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images