Perez: Thank you Alex Albon, I really appreciate it

After a poor season last year with Red Bull, Albon was ousted from the team to make way for Perez, the Thai driver simply failed to deliver on expectations as Max Verstappen's teammate. The team was a one man show as opposed to a two-pronged effort.

With Yuki Tsunoda flavour of the month at AlphaTauri to partner an on form Pierre Gasly, Albon was relegated to lead Red Bull's new DTM campaign and, clearly, some serious time in the F1 simulator on behalf of the A-Team.

So much so that in their preview of this weekend's French Grand Prix, Perez saw fit to credit his predecessor for the success he enjoyed in Baku: "I think we’ve got a pretty good Team! I think what Max did was great to see, he really deserved the win and he did everything perfectly that weekend, he was just very unlucky.

"Alex [Albon] as well is putting so much work into the simulator and with the engineers. I remember when I came here, I didn’t expect him to be so open but he explained how the car works.

"Tat was very nice to have him around since day one. So I really appreciated that and I appreciate the work that he’s doing with the Team," added Perez.

Before winning in Baku, he boldly predicted it would take him five races to find his groove with Red Bull and, in his sixth race for the team, he delivered a famous victory after playing the wingman role to perfection.

Make no mistake, Perez is at Red Bull to provide support for Verstappen as he did for the first 50 or so laps of an incident-packed Azerbaijan Grand Prix, as they powered to what seemed to be a commanding one-two in Baku, until it wasn't.

With Max out Checo was in the firing line... and we know how that ended: his first victory for Red Bull and thus ticking every box his paymasters could wish for, just as questions were being asked and a certain Helmut Marko was dialling up the pressure through the media.

Perez looked back on his big day: "I feel very, very proud. It’s a victory that really shows the amount of work we’ve all put in since January and shows how hard work always pays off.

"It’s also a great boost for the whole team to know that we’ve got two cars that can fight for the championship and that we all really want to win.

"I thought that I had everything to lose, it’s only two laps, I’m on pole and it’s our race to be lost. So I just tried to do the perfect start and for many reasons that didn’t happen but, in the end, think we got lucky because who knows what would have happened?

"If we got a good start with Lewis having issues with his brakes, so in the end it all worked out. I spoke with Stefano after the race and told him 'you guys really liked the show!' and he said 'well this is fantastic for the fans.'

After Monaco, Red Bull took the championship lead from Mercedes for the first time in almost a decade. They departed Baku 26 points ahead thanks to Perez's maximum haul and their rivals going home with a zero under Baku on their scorecard.

But nothing of this is going to Perez's head: "It’s only race six and as I say it doesn’t really matter where we are now it’s where we finish in Abu Dhabi so we just have to keep chipping away, making sure we maximise our car potential.

"I’ve been in Formula 1 for many years that I know that so many things can happen, so we just have to keep our heads down, now what has happened is history and we just have to keep looking forwards," he added.