Racing Point’s Sergio Perez was relieved to have beaten the McLarens in F1 Azerbaijan GP as Lance Stroll recovered well in the points.
Perez has always been mighty at the Baku City Circuit with two podium finishes to his name. He lived up to his hype by qualifying sixth in the Racing Point car, which hasn’t been delivering as much as they would have liked to so far in the 2019 F1 season.
The Mexican made a good start and even passed Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen in Turn 1 but the Dutchman came around to re-pass him. He lost out to the faster cars of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Red Bull’s Pierre Gasly but hung on as the best of the rest.
He was being chased down by McLaren’s Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris. In fact, Sainz was positioning himself to make a move on Perez after VSC but the Mexican found extra pace to secure sixth. “It’s been a good day,” said Perez to the media.
“It was looking great at the start when I overtook Verstappen, but then very early on, we saw where our pace was and it was more about beating those McLarens that were very strong today, had tremendous pace.
“It was a very demanding race from my side, because I spent basically the whole race on the limit, fighting those temperatures, struggled quite a lot on the first stint, but luckily we got good points for the team and it’s been a fantastic day for us.”
While Perez showed his magic, teammate Stroll wasn’t too far behind either. As has been the case with the Canadian, he shows up well on a Sunday than Saturday. Once again, he was down and out after qualifying after a Q1 exit but turned it around in the race.
He made a solid start and was already inside the Top 10 but he dropped many places after the pit stop – behind the drivers who could have scored points. He managed to climb back up and the crash for Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat allowed him to be 10th.
A retirement for Gasly further helped him to be ninth and take away two points as Racing Point climbed up to fifth in the constructors’ championship with 17 points to McLaren’s 18. “It was good to score points for both cars,” said Stroll.
“Especially from my side, it was a good recovery from early shunt [in qualifying] and missing a lot of track time even building up to qualifying after general lack of running on Friday, so to pick up points, it was good.
“It was fun, we overtook cars. We were fortunate with the contact between Kvyat and Ricciardo because we picked up a couple of places there, then we overtook a few more cars on track, but the car felt good throughout the race.”
Here’s how the Azerbaijan GP panned out
Daniel Ricciardo says it was ‘urgency and panic’ in Baku incident
Here’s Charles Leclerc on not pushing in second/third stint
Robert Kubica reveals he nearly crashed in Turn 2 at Azerbaijan GP start
Lewis Hamilton was cautious at start as he played a team game