Eleven laps remain of the 2023 Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Max Verstappen is 3.6 seconds behind his Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez. Defeat in Baku, and a 2-2 record from the opening four races of the season, stare back from the leading RB19.
But then that gap starts to come down – quite rapidly at first – to 3.1s. And holds. It creeps up as the Red Bull pair lap Valtteri Bottas. But by lap 47 of 51 it’s on the way down again to a finishing margin of 2.1s. Verstappen has just registered what he considers the worst weekend of his 2023 Formula 1 campaign, with two defeats in the first double-race appearance for the season of the sprint format he detests, plus that ugly episode with Mercedes driver George Russell in the Saturday parc ferme.
