Hughes: Perez causing Red Bull headache

Sergio Perez scored his first Red Bull victory a year ago at the Baku circuit which he will be revisiting this weekend, fresh off his second Red Bull win at Monaco two weeks ago.

He's flying right now, a genuine world championship contender in theory at least, in third place only 15 points behind team-mate Max Verstappen, less than one-tenth slower in qualifying on average in the season to date, with a pole and a win already under his belt just seven races in.

Baku 2021 was the foundation for such a level of success. This was the first race in which he showed he could fulfil the role of Verstappen's support. He was there to pick up the pieces when Verstappen's tyre blew when in a commanding lead.

Prior to that, he had overcut himself past early leader Lewis Hamilton at the pit stops, so demoting Verstappen's key rival. He then proceeded to hold off Hamilton as Verstappen eased away without having to give his fresh tyres a hard time.

Neither of the Red Bull's junior graduates Pierre Gasly nor Alex Albon had regularly been able to do that in their time in the second Red Bull seat in 2019 and '20.

The aggressively pointy cars Red Bull produced during that time - influenced by Verstappen's ability to happily live with the rear instability that brought - ensured that whoever got into the second seat was struggling to get anywhere near Verstappen's pace.

Initially, this was the case with Perez too. Baku, round six last year, was the first time that Verstappen could benefit from Perez delaying his rivals. Prior to that, Verstappen had been fighting pretty much on his own on race days, with Perez invariably too far back to compromise the strategy of the Mercedes drivers.

But Perez has always flown around the Azerbaijan street