There may never have been, so far in the 2026 Formula 1 season, such a stark contrast in intra-team performance as between Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Bottas was outqualified by 1.632s on Friday, albeit hindered by a yellow flag, and his woes persisted deep into the race. By his first pitstop on lap 26, the Finn was already over 46 seconds adrift of the sister Cadillac, equating to a 1.9s loss per lap. His late-race pace was similar, as after the safety car interventions he was dropping back by 1.6s a lap.
“Long one,” Bottas nervously chuckled when asked to describe his race. “Honestly, no pace at all. I could only fight with Fernando [Alonso] – for sure, we lost some time there. Otherwise, pretty far off, so lots of things to look into from this weekend.”
The veteran did have to do some lift-and-coast but reckoned that didn’t explain his mammoth deficit. “I think there’s something else. We’ll have a look,” he said.
Meanwhile, Perez matched the pace of the midfield throughout the first stint. On lap 20, when Carlos Sainz made his first pitstop, the Spaniard led the Cadillac by just one second; Audi pair Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto weren’t much further down the road.
Perez made the most of the safety car to emerge back on track ahead of Sainz and passed Gabriel Bortoleto to ever so briefly hold 12th following the restart chaos, but eventually fell back down to 15th behind Liam Lawson, Bortoleto and Oscar Piastri.
“It’s been one of my best weekends in Baku to be honest, I managed to get 150% out of that car,” the two-time Azerbaijan GP winner said.
Sergio Perez, Cadillac Racing
Photo by: Alex Pantling / LAT Images via Getty Images
“We were fighting cars that are a second or two seconds faster than us due to the overtake mode, so we stayed with them throughout the first stint – with the Williams, with the Audi, big gap. But then in the end at the restart we just don’t have any straightline speed, so we fall back. We fought for a bit with Piastri, I think he had some damage.
“At the moment we’re lacking really half a second to a second to be able to mix with them.
“The problem is really my pace. I was a sitting duck on the straights, so I knew that there was not much opportunity.”
The gap between Perez and Bottas may therefore be explained by the Mexican’s attacking ethos in the Baku streets: “The way I felt like I was driving, if anything went wrong at any corner I would have put it in the wall. So when you do a race like this, you feel really proud.”
Meanwhile, Bottas’ race ended in the wall due to a technical issue shortly before the checkered flag.
“The same lap I had a lock-up into Turn 1, I went wide,” the Cadillac driver explained. “Then I think the systems got a bit confused because of the extra distance. I had a huge super clip into Turn 15, and then when I hit the brakes, only the front brakes would work, almost like I wasn’t harvesting anymore with the rears. So, something got a bit confused there.”
The Finn has now had three consecutive grands prix without spending a single racing lap ahead of his team-mate on the track.
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