It really worked out today for us, says 'lucky' Perez

The weekend couldn't have gone any better for Red Bull driver Sergio Perez, who backed up his win in Saturday's sprint race in Baku with victory in today's full-length Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

It moves Perez to within six points of his team mate Max Verstappen, who wasn't able to catch Perez following an early restart and had to settle for second place, two seconds behind.

Verstappen had earlier taken the lead from pole sitter Charles Leclerc on lap 4, with Perez soon up into second. But Verstappen then made his pit stop just before a safety car was scrambled for Nyck de Vries' accident on lap 8

• Read also: Perez too quick for Verstappen to handle in Baku

That gave Perez the opportunity to benefit from a 'free' pit stop that handed him the lead of the race for the restart ahead of Leclerc and Verstappen, and from there he was able to hold on to the top spot for the rest of the race.

“It really worked out today for us,” Perez said. “We managed to stay in the DRS [before the caution] and we managed to keep the pressure on Max. I think we had better deg on that first stint.

“It was looking good already from that side, then the safety car came and bunched everyone up and it was again another race on the hard tyre," he continued. “I think it was very close between us.

"The way Max pushed me throughout the race was really hard, but we managed to keep him under control," he added. “He pushed to the maximum today. We both clipped the wall a few times, we were pushing out there.

Perez himself made a solid hit on the barrier on the exit of turn 15 on lap 34. “Really hard! I had a little bit of luck, especially with that front-right, that it didn’t blow up.”

As well as Saturday's sprint, Perez previously won the 2021 Azerbaijan GP making him the only driver to date to win two Grands Prix in Baku.

But it's closing the gap to his team mate in the championship that really matters to Perez at the moment. Verstappen was putting a brave face on missing out on victory to Perez for the second time in 2023.

"The safety car was a bit unlucky," he told the media in parc ferme after the end of the race. "I had to push again. I tried to stay very close to try and get into the DRS.

"The tyres were overheating a bit because of that, trying to follow," he explained. "But also the balance, I was struggling to be really consistent. I was playing around with the tools a little bit.

"Once I got that sorted, I would say the last ten laps were actually quite good again - but just a little bit too late."

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner explained why Verstappen's pit stop timing had backfired in the aftermath of de Vries' accident.

"De Vries hadn't hit the wall, the [AlphaTauri's] engine was still running, and to us it looked like he was going to reverse out and go from there," he told Sky Sports F1. "So we had already committed to the stop.

"It was the optimum time to stop from a performance point of view," he explained. "Of course with 20-20 hindsight you can always say should've, would've, could've. Sometimes things like that just don't go your way.

"His misfortune was Checo's good fortune," Horner added.

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