Perez has certainly been rewarded by that approach. While he isn’t blindly following Verstappen, he is using that as the foundation of his set-up and driving while bringing a dash of his own magic – in particular his capacity to deliver seemingly impossible stints of tire management in races – with the net result of being on the brink of establishing himself as a long-term Red Bull driver. He still doesn’t have that contract for 2022, and probably won’t for a while, but on current trajectory, he will.
There is still more to come, of course. Qualifying has always been Perez’s weaker suit and although his Saturday record in F1 is solid enough, ensuring he’s close enough to the front at the start of races is critical to his success this year. Thanks to that Q3 first-run error, he didn’t do that at Baku, but cleared traffic quickly and was right there. Given his strengths as a race driver, we can take it as a given that he will deliver if he’s in the mix with the frontrunners from the start, which is what makes Saturday so vital. He doesn’t need to be at Verstappen’s pace, and won’t be consistently, but he needs to be within the oft-quoted three-tenths. And he can be, as Baku hinted at.
This matters not only because of the need for Perez to score points for Red Bull’s constructors’ championship push, but also for his role in support of Verstappen. While Perez excelled in Azerbaijan, his opposite number at Mercedes struggled. Valtteri Bottas had arguably his worst weekend as a Mercedes driver in terms of performance, finishing 12th and having no impact on the battle at the front. While his performance was clearly an outlier and he can be expected to be back on his usual form at Paul Ricard this weekend, it was an unexpected slump.
During the weekend, Bottas was baffled but the Mercedes team later put it down to his struggles to build temperature in the front tires. Strangely, this had actually been a strength of his relative to Hamilton in the previous event at Monaco.
“At this circuit, one of the difficulties is getting the warm-up of the front tire and need to have real confidence, the walls are really close and if you get it wrong you are going to put it into the wall,” said Mercedes technology director Mike Elliott. “Those two things kind of go together, because if you can go a little bit quicker, if you can get yourself a little bit closer to the wall because you are confident, then you get a bit more heat into the tires.
“If you get more heat into the tires you get a bit more grip and you can go faster, and so you end up with this sort of positive spiral. I think Valtteri just didn’t get to that position. He didn’t find that last little bit of confidence to be in that positive spiral in the same way [as his teammate].”
Prior to Azerbaijan, Bottas had been the more influential of the number two drivers in the title fight. Although he also went missing at Imola before being eliminated after Williams driver George Russell took to the grass and spun into him while challenging for position, he has usually been a factor at the front in other races even if he never had a decisive impact on the title protagonists. But Baku changed that.
The roles Perez and Bottas play could be decisive in the championship battle. That’s not just in terms of taking points off their respective teammates’ title rivals, but also in confounding the strategy options. In Azerbaijan, it was two Red Bulls versus one Mercedes up front. While Hamilton ultimately didn’t have the pace in the car to do much about them, had Bottas also been up there, or if the roles had been reversed with Perez out of the picture, it would have created a different strategic landscape.
Perez’s success at Baku made Bottas’s struggles all the more apparent. Mauger/Motorsport Images
Prior to Baku, Perez had generally been absent from the lead battle. In Spain, in particular, that was a bit problem. Had he been where he should have been – i.e., somewhere in Hamilton’s pitstop window – then Mercedes might not have gambled on the extra pitstop. These are the unseen influences such drivers have on the title fight, and in a season where a few points either way could decide both championships, they could be crucial.
We need to see how the coming races shake out to be sure, but Baku had the feel of a genuine breakthrough for Perez. And given how hard he’s worked to get into this position, he richly deserves the success.
And that success is a reminder to top teams that, much as getting the next big thing in appeals, there’s also a place for experience when it comes to driver selection.