Perez secures stunning victory at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix

Sergio Perez has secured a sensational victory at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, taking the lead from Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen amid safety car pitstops which he did not relinquish.

The Mexican 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.

Verstappen's Mistimed Pitstop

Verstappen pitted in response to Perez, but the emergence of a lap 11 safety car as marshals cleared Nyck de Vries' stranded AlphaTauri, meant that his side of the garage had somewhat mistimed the call.

The safety car emerged when Verstappen was exiting the pitlane, giving 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.

Perez's Impressive Pace

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.

However, 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.

By the end of lap 36, Perez was clocking in with laps in the 1:44s, with Verstappen still mired in the 1:45s to help the Guadalajara-born driver's lead grow to 2.5s - 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 3.6s but lost 0.6s to Verstappen in trying to lap the twice-stopped Valtteri Bottas' Alfa Romeo, forcing him to bolster his defences in the following lap with another series of quick laps.

The difference between the two was  at 3.7s, which Perez felt was enough to secure the victory - and began to back off, crossing the line with 2.1s 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 1:44.474.

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's Impressive Performance

Alonso was 0.8s 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.

Lewis Hamilton overtook Lance Stroll to take sixth, while George Russell 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

Drivers Standings after Azerbaijan Grand Prix

Team Standings after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix