Carlos Sainz Jr. and Sergio Pérez cleared after late incident in Azerbaijan Grand Prix

There was drama all over the Baku streets on Sunday in the Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

But perhaps the most dramatic moment, besides Oscar Piastri’s stunning overtake of Charles Leclerc that opened the door for his second Grand Prix victory of the season? The late-lap incident between Carlos Sainz Jr. and Sergio Pérez. As the two were battling for third behind Sainz’s Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc, they came together, and the resulting collision knocked both drivers out of the race, and had the stewards summoning them for a post-race chat:

https://x.com/F1/status/1835313933038526863

After a hearing, stewards termed the crash a “racing incident,” and took no further action:

The Stewards checked the driving line of the drivers on previous laps. Sainz was on or close to his normal racing line, which forms a slight angle away from the right-hand wall. From the exit to the point of contact he move approximately one car width further away from the wall. Perez moved approximately half a car width further away from the same wall, being more parallel to the right hand wall.

It was thus apparent that while ahead, and having the right to drive his line, Sainz did move slightly towards a car that he had limited vision of. At the same time, there was nothing unusual about Perez’ line, but he could have done more to avoid the car that he had better view of.

In conclusion, the Stewards deem this to be a racing incident with neither driver being predominantly at fault, and take no further action.

Following the race, both drivers talked with the official F1 channel about the incident.

“I was attacking Charles into Turn 2 and then I exited Turn 2,” said Sainz. “Checo [Pérez] was on my left. We normally do a slight drift towards the left into the long straight, which I did like every other lap, and suddenly for some reason I don’t understand, Checo and I collided, which is unfortunate and also very disappointing.

“We’ve spoken already,” added the Ferrari. “[But] we need to analyze. I’m not someone who wants to put blame on either an excuse or put blame on another driver. It’s racing, everything happens super-fast.

“My feeling today is honestly I did nothing wrong, I didn’t do any erratic manoeuvre, put him against the wall or anything like that. We were just, like every other lap, drifting a bit, a tiny, tiny little bit towards the left because that’s where the racing line is and we just touched. It is what it is.”

As you might expect, Pérez saw things slightly differently.“

I felt that exiting Turn 2, there was plenty of room between both cars, and within a meter or two, we ended up making contact,” said Pérez after the race. “It’s very unfortunate. It all happened so quickly. I think Carlos was trying to follow the tow from Charles as he went to the inside and that really made things really hard.”

The impact between the two was a bitter pill for both teams to swallow, as it knocked both out of contention for a podium position. The bitterness might have existed more on Red Bull’s side of the garage, as Ferrari still saw Leclerc on the podium with a second-place finish.

For Red Bull, they could only soothe themselves with a P5 from Max Verstappen.