Verstappen leads home Perez as Red Bull dominate Emilia Romagna GP

Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez came home first and second at Imola on Sunday. It was Red Bull’s first 1-2 finish since 2016

Red Bull Racing bounced back in style with a clean sweep at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix as Max Verstappen led home Sergio Perez to claim a 1-2 finish.

Verstappen’s championship defence looked in tatters when he retired from second place in the Australian Grand Prix, falling 46 points adrift of pace setter Charles Leclerc in the Ferrari.

But the Dutchman’s weekend got off to the perfect start with pole position on Friday, and was followed up by winning the sprint race on Saturday before leading the entire race on Sunday while also setting the fastest lap.

To cap it off, Leclerc spun out of third spot while chasing down Perez and came home sixth.

Verstappen celebrates his second win of the season

It means Verstappen is now 27 points adrift of Leclerc in the standings.

“To have a weekend like this for both of us with a one-two for the team is just incredible,” he said. “Everything today was well executed, coming into the weekend I didn’t expect it to be like this. It was more or less a perfect weekend, everything went well for us.

“I scored the maximum amount of points this weekend and we can be really proud of that as a team, it’s a great boost.”

Perez, in claiming back-to-back second places, moved into third place in the championship standings and gave Red Bull their first 1-2 finish since the Malaysian Grand Prix in 2016.

He said: “The race was pretty intense with Charles, he was always within an undercut range and when we thought we had him under control he boxed and made things a lot harder for both of us. We were both pushing with cold tyres and, in fairness to Charles, it was easy to make mistakes.

“We have had such a difficult start to the season with reliability concerns and DNFs, so it was really important we brought it home today - it is a great result for the team.”