Perez achieves 'main objective' with Saturday sprint win

Sergio Perez said that he had achieved the key thing that he had set out to do on Saturday, by claiming victory in the Azerbaijan sprint race - and with it, eight vital championship points.

Perez was tied with Red Bull team mate Max Verstappen in the championship standings heading into the last race in Australia, but came out of Melbourne 13 points adrift after only managing to finish in P5.

This week, the Mexican driver has set his sights on clawing back some of that lost ground - and pulled off the first stage of that task by winning the 17-lap sprint while Verstappen finished third.

• Read also: Perez picks up sprint race win from Leclerc in Baku

That's only two points, but it's a definite step in the right direction as far as Perez is concerned.

"To get away with maximum points was the main objective," he told the media in parc ferme afterwards, who admitted that the pressure had been on coming into the new-look sprint format weekend.

“Really happy, pleased for the whole team. They’ve done a tremendous job. It’s not easy this format, it puts a lot of pressure on drivers, mechanics and engineers.

“I’m really proud of my guys," he added. "If you look back, we come from a four week break and straight into this new type of format. I think we’ve done a great job.

"I had to push quite hard initially to get past Charles, especially at the restart because on the first lap I could see he had good pace and very good mechanical grip.

"Later on, I was able to make the move early enough and that to me was important," he noted. "It was key to make sure that we had good pace, good rhythm, that we pushed in the key moments of the race, and that really made the difference.

"In the end, it was a really nice executed weekend from the whole team," he said - although that's not to say that it was quite as easy and straightforward as it might have looked outside the cockpit.

“I did have a bit of degradation on my tyres," he revealed. "So when Charles was staying on my DRS I could not pull the gap early enough to break that DRS, so that made it a little bit tricky.”

"[Checo] didn’t put a foot wrong," said Red Bull team principal Christi9an Horner. " He was sensible on the first lap and wanted to get the job done quickly so he could focus on managing the tyres.

"He had a blinding middle sector on the second lap [after the restart], made the pass and was able to eek out a gap. Then once he broke Charles’s DRS he was able to bring it home from there. Fantastic driving and a well deserved win."

However, just because Perez was able to blast his way past pole sitter Charles Leclerc as soon as DRS was enabled doesn't mean that the same will happen in tomorrow's Grand Prix.

"Obviously we know that tomorrow is the main race," he acknowledged. "Tomorrow is what matters, and we need to focus on that.

“I think there is good learning today," he said. "We were able to learn a bit. But obviously tomorrow we're going to have much higher fuel loads [and] track conditions are going to be different.

Perez will also be starting one place further back than he did today, lining up in third rather than on the front row. "P3 is not ideal for tomorrow’s race, but I will give it a go and fight for the win.

"I’m confident that I will be fighting for the win, but let’s see. It's Baku, anything can happen. I just want to make sure I deliver when it matters.”

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter