Red Bull have lost the lead of the Constructor’s Championship after picking up a fifth place finish at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Sergio Perez nearly picked up a first podium since April but crashed out on the second-to-last lap while team-mate Max Verstappen had an off-colour weekend, finishing fifth, though he was elevated by two positions after the collision between Perez and Carlos Sainz when they were fighting over fourth.

With McLaren seeing Oscar Piastri win the race and Lando Norris finish fourth with the fastest lap bonus point, it means that Red Bull are knocked off top spot in the Constructor’s Championship, with the Milton Keynes-based team now 20 points behind Woking.

The result means Red Bull are now in a position other than first in the Constructor’s Championship for the first time since the early stages of 2022, having won the title in 2022, lead for the entirety of 2023 and been in the lead for 2024 until now.

McLaren, for their part, are leading the Constructor’s race for the first time since 2014, ahead of next weekend’s race at Singapore and a month pause in the season.

In the Driver’s Championship, Verstappen remains in the lead, with the Dutch driver seeing his lead on Norris cut to 59 points, while he is now 78 ahead of third place Charles Leclerc.

Perez, meanwhile, dropped a place to 8th, with the Mexican level on 143 points with George Russell but behind due to Russell winning in Austria and Perez being yet to win.

Red Bull had seen something of a switch at the Baku City Circuit in Azerbaijan, with Perez being the lead driver in qualifying at a track where he picked up his last win in F1 last April. This was the first time Verstappen had been outqualified by Perez in 2024.

Each Red Bull made a place off the line, with Perez jumping ahead of Sainz and Verstappen getting ahead of Mercedes man Russell.

Much of Perez’s race saw him chasing the front two of Piastri and Leclerc, but he was unable to close up on the McLaren and Ferrari as they spent a long phase after their pit-stop duelling over the lead. Perez was closing up, but not quite able to get past.

Verstappen, meanwhile, had more of a compromised afternoon, with the Dutch driver having issues and he was overtaken first by Russell and then by Norris, despite the McLaren having started a long way behind his championship rival following complications in qualifying. Norris had previously held Verstappen up before making his pit-stop.

In the latter stages, Leclerc saw his tyres fade and that brought Perez closer. Sainz, however, had been closing up on the pair of them, and a major scramble at the start of lap 50 saw Perez and Sainz fight hard until a collision put both cars in the wall and out of the race.

The stewards would later rule the incident to be a racing incident, meaning there will not be penalties issued for either driver involved at the next round in Singapore.

Verstappen, meanwhile, had pit to try to go for fastest lap, but before he could take his tyres for a spin, he couldn’t try to get it.

The Dutchman would also be summoned to the stewards, with Verstappen one of four drivers handed a warning by the stewards for breaking virtual safety car procedure on the cooldown lap.