Perez claims “biggest Red Bull upgrade of the year”

Sergio Perez has claimed that Red Bull's performance improvement at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was the biggest of the season.

The Milton Keynes-based team has taken the event to a new level and is looking to improve its form on the track, which has waned of late.

Red Bull also uses an improved diffuser system, similar to the one seen at Ferrari in Italy two weeks ago.

Perez finished qualifying in Baku in fourth place, surpassing his teammate Max Verstappen for the first time this year.

The Mexican driver, who has struggled with performance issues for much of the year, praised the progress Red Bull has made with the upgrade.

“I think it’s a good turnaround because we’ve definitely brought a good upgrade,” said Perez Sky F1“I think it’s the biggest upgrade of the year.

“We recognised the problem a few races ago but I think we are making progress in the right direction to fix it. Hopefully we can just keep going and do a little bit more because that will be the key to turning our season around.”

Perez would have preferred Verstappen on pole

Pole position for the race went to Ferrari and Charles Leclerc, with the Monegasque driver three tenths of a second ahead of his closest rival.

Although he managed to beat Verstappen for the first time this year, Perez stressed that he would have preferred to see his teammate on pole position to demonstrate the car's potential.

“I just wish Max was on pole and not Charles [being] “We have a lead of four tenths and feel a little more comfortable in the car and know that the potential is there,” he said.

“Unfortunately, that's not the case at the moment. I think I'm optimistic about the race pace.

“We saw [on Friday]we were more competitive, but we were also more competitive on a single timed lap.

“What we saw from Ferrari today was very strong, but hopefully things will go better for us in the long race tomorrow.”