Max Verstappen has admitted Red Bull cannot get carried away despite a fifth successive Formula One race win for the team in Azerbaijan. Verstappen clinched his fourth win in the last five races in Baku and his first at this circuit.
The Red Bull driver became the sixth different winner of the Baku race and was helped by a double Ferrari DNF with Carlos Sainz, on lap nine, and Charles Leclerc, on lap 20, both forced to retire. Leclerc had a power unit failure while leading the race.
After crossing the finishing line, Verstappen said: “Was that a good race or was that a good race? You tell me. Amazing result for the team. Really happy with that.” Verstappen is now 21 points clear in the championship standings with Sergio Perez second.
The Mexican, who finished P2 in Azerbaijan, is 13 ahead of Ferrari’s Leclerc. The Monegasque’s nine-point deficit to Verstappen pre-race is now a 34-point gap. But Verstappen is still wary of a response from the Prancing Horse in Canada next Sunday.
The Dutchman said: “You can never make up what you lost last year but today we had an incredible car and we could really look after the car and chip away at it and pass for the lead. Of course also a tiny bit lucky with the retirement. Nevertheless our car was really quick today so I could’ve closed that gap then you have a race on your hands.
Overall, really happy with how the balance of the car was today. Tyre behaviour together with general grip of the car, that’s what you need around here, then you can look after your tyres.
A one-two as a team as well, it’s a really good day for us. I think every weekend is a bit different, you really have to be precise and on it for the little things for the race management as well. It can swing around every race weekend.
Second-placed Perez said: “Unfortunately we missed the virtual safety car stop, there was some miscommunication and we were a bit too late. We were a bit unlucky there.
“At the restart I just had too much deg on the medium tyre, the deg was extremely high for me. We have to understand what happened there. Certainly Max was a lot stronger today on that medium stint.
A lot of things to review but still a very good team result. I think it was the right call by the team [not to fight] because Max was a bit further ahead at the time. It’s a good team result In this race anything can happen but we managed a one-two so that’s a great team result.
