Verstappen and Perez dominate Baku as Ferrari drop the ball

Max Verstappen has claimed another win in 2022, while title rivals Ferrari failed to finish.

Under sunny skies, the streets of Azerbaijan played host to round eight of the 2022 Formula 1 world championship, with the ten teams doing battle around the 6.003km Baku City Circuit.

Sergio Perez flew into the lead from the start before storming away from the rest over the next few laps. The top-three, Perez, Charles Leclerc and Verstappen, would soon begin to break away from the pack.

On lap nine, Carlos Sainz would suffer a mechanical failure, retiring from the Grand Prix and bringing out the Virtual Safety Car. Several drivers, including Sainz’s teammate Leclerc, would use this to make their first stops.

On lap 15, Verstappen would pass Perez at turn one as Leclerc began to close on the Red Bull pair. Verstappen’s pace would immediately show, moving three seconds ahead of his teammate in one lap.

At the end of lap 16, Perez would come into the pits, dropping behind Leclerc while Verstappen would wait until lap 18 to strap on a set of hard tyres. Leclerc would resume the lead.

Suddenly, the race would hold another ace up its sleeve as Leclerc’s engine gave up on the main straight, flipping the title on its head with Red Bull holding a 1-2.

Talking to Sky Sports F1, a dejected Leclerc said:

“I mean, it hurts. We really need to look into that for it to not happen again. I don’t really find the right words to describe it, obviously it’s very, very disappointing.

“Now it seems he have a bit more [problems] compared to the beginning of the season but we didn’t change massive things. If anything, we made the things better.

“I don’t know, I have no news. I came from the car straight to here, I didn’t speak to anybody from the team.”

As the race went on, more Ferrari-powered cars fell out of the race. Zhou Guanyu and Kevin Magnussen both retired with issues, with the latter bringing out the VSC.

Red Bull would maintain the lead, boxing their drivers under the yellow flags while George Russell would take another step to the podium following a calm and quiet race for the Mercedes driver.

The race would end with Verstappen storming to victory ahead of Perez, with Russell bringing his W13 home in third place.

Speaking in the post-race interviews, Verstappen said:

“Today we had an incredible pace in the car, we could really look after the tyres and we could chip away at it, pass for the lead.

“Maybe a tiny bit lucky, of course, with the retirement [for Leclerc] but I think nevertheless our car was really good today.”

Red Bull now lead Ferrari by 80 points while Verstappen establishes his lead over Leclerc to 34 points. Perez now finds himself in second ahead of both Ferrari drivers.

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