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Tyres NorthamptonA rare strategic error from the reigning constructors' champions demoted Max Verstappen from the lead during a Safety Car period to hand his teammate the lead, but Perez was rapidly catching his Dutch counterpart to cement his reputation as a street circuit specialist.
The largely processional race had a shock ending where Alpine's Esteban Ocon entered the pit lane to find a hoard of photographers in his way. The FIA will feel fortunate that the incident did not see any injuries or worse, and the scary scenes overshadowed Perez's celebration of his second Azerbaijan Grand Prix triumph.
Charles Leclerc enjoyed his first pole position of the season to break Red Bull's three-race run of P1 qualifications. However, it didn't take long to see that his Ferrari could not realistically compete at the front. Fellow front-row starter Verstappen kept close to Leclerc's rear wing in the opening two laps in an ominous sign that the RB19 Baku car's upgrades maintained the racing advantage the team enjoyed in the opening rounds.
Indeed, on the first lap that the stewards enabled DRS, Verstappen effortlessly glided by his Ferrari rival at the end of the 2 km straight with Leclerc powerless to defend. A similarly straightforward pass from Perez two laps later meant an increasingly familiar duo occupied the top two positions.
With a Sprint Saturday seeing a short 17-lap race serve as preparation for the 20 drivers, nearly all the runners chose Pirelli's medium tyres to start the race with. The exceptions were the pit lane-starting Nico Hulkenberg, Esteban Ocon, plus Nyck de Vries, who lined up last on the grid.
Tyre wear on the yellow-walled mediums caused problems for some frontrunners early on. Lewis Hamilton only lasted until Lap 9 before switching to the hard compound after a two-pronged Aston Martin attack from Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll inched up behind him. Verstappen, too, pitted one lap after Hamilton as Perez quickly reached the one-second DRS window of his teammate.
Just before Verstappen's stop, an overeager De Vries smashed his front-left wheel into the wall at the slow speed Turn 5, breaking his suspension and triggering the race's sole Safety Car. Red Bull rolled the dice and pitted Verstappen shortly after the crash but before the Safety Car boards appeared. The timing meant Verstappen would not benefit from slower running by his competitors had he waited for one more lap.
When the Safety Car did appear, all remaining medium-running drivers dived into the pit lane to take advantage of the slowdown that even saw an opportunistic pit lane entry overtake by George Russell on Stroll's Aston Martin. The pit stops shuffled Hamilton and, more crucially, Verstappen down the order, and the Lap 14 restart saw some of the best racing of the Grand Prix as some drivers enjoyed better tyre warm-up than the cars around them.
Verstappen didn't wait for DRS and took just three corners to repass Leclerc to regain his P2 starting position. An opportunistic move from Alonso on fellow Spaniard Carlos Sainz had F1's eldest statesman reach P4, the position he'd finished the race in, which amazingly marks his lowest finish of 2023.
Russell had let Stroll by earlier at Turn 2 in a disastrous restart for the Mercedes driver, and he lost a further place end of that restart lap when Hamilton lunged by down the DRS straight. With DRS assistance, Russell's seven-time champion teammate took the Canadian Aston Martin driver a few laps later to mark the last overtake in the top 10 for the following 30 laps.
Hulkenberg and Ocon's strategy gamble to start on hard tyres and hope for a late-race Safety Car or Red Flag stoppage didn't work out, and the two drivers made their mandatory stops in the dying laps. Although a perfectly legal, albeit unorthodox approach, Ocon's penultimate lap pit stop seemingly took the FIA by surprise.
The pit lane marshals had allowed the press to assemble to photograph the top three finishers in the pit lane before the Frenchman's mandatory tyre change. With the nature of the barriers at the pit entry, Ocon had no idea that people stood in his way in the pit lane and approached as though everything was normal.
The scenes of people desperately running away from the oncoming Alpine car are the opposite of what the safety-conscious FIA aims for, and serious questions will come this week to prevent the incident from recurring. A shaken Ocon later expressed how dangerous the situation was and how fortunate those in the pit lane were that he didn't overshoot his braking point.
With Miami coming up this weekend to mark the second race of five in just six weekends, Azerbaijan might be the perfect confidence boost for Perez to kick off a gruelling racing schedule. The Mexican excels at street circuits, and Miami and Monaco represent two of the upcoming three Grands Prix.
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