In a shocking turn of events, no Red Bull driver was on the podium at Baku for the first time since 2019. Sergio Perez had managed to snatch P3 from Carlos Sainz on the first lap of the race, even lapping as fast as the frontrunners and entering the battle for the win.
The two-time winner in Azerbaijan was on the verge of overtaking Leclerc for P2 on the penultimate lap of the race, when he came into contact with Carlos Sainz, who had run wide at turn 2 after the Spaniard got him on the exit of the previous corner.
Red Bull’s Team Principal Christian Horner was straightforward in his take on the accident, blaming solely the Ferrari driver and calling for action to be taken:
“Frustrating because with Checo, he certainly should have been on the podium, at the very least in third place, probably second.”
Horner went as far as to say the Mexican driver had the potential to actually win a third time at the track, but that he unfortunately lost plenty of time after his pit stop as Lando Norris played the team game to make sure Oscar Piastri rejoined ahead following his stop two laps later.
He held him up in the middle sector, losing Pérez over a second in the process.
“I think actually he could have won that race had it not been for, he lost a lot of time behind Alex Albon initially and then Lando, whilst he was on new tyres and Oscar was still out on the old tyres. Lando backed him up, which allowed Oscar to keep track position.
“Without that we would have been ahead of Oscar, he would have passed Leclerc and he would have been fine,” he concluded, remarking the fact that had that happened, the crash wouldn’t have taken place and the Milton Keynes based team wouldn’t have lost the lead of the constructors’s standings.
“So hugely frustrating. I’ve just watched the incident several times on the skypad and you can quite clearly see that Carlos, if you take the wall as a reference and the white line on the right hand side of the track, you see him look in his mirror and just drift to the left. So knowing that he was there, and Checo doesn’t doesn’t move left or right. Hugely frustrating to lose that.”
All in all, it was a very positive weekend, bar the final result for Perez, who put in a strong driving performance and would have deserved the title of best finishing Red Bull.
“I thought he was super, I thought Checo had a very strong weekend. And he had great pace throughout that race. To sit on the tail of [Leclerc], for the entire Grand Prix distance, you know, he was on the pace throughout the weekend. Just a great shame for him not to have capitalised with the podium, which has been costly in constructors’ points and in crash damage.”
Red Bull won’t have much time to consolw themselves, with another race taking place next week in Singapore.
Horner strongly called for the FIA to take action against the Spanish driver.
“From what I’ve just seen, I would have expected causing that kind of incident and collision. I’d be very disappointed if he weren’t to take some form of penalty.”
The wishes of the Red Bull team boss were denied, as no further action was taken.
