Perez crossed the finish line 5.3s ahead of Verstappen, who spent the last few laps recharging his battery for a final fastest lap tour – which was ultimately successful as he crossed the finish line with a 1m31.906s lap.
The Mexican suffered a setback at the start, which saw Alonso seep through to the first corner to take the lead and settle into first place.
But Alonso was immediately pinged for starting from the wrong position and a quick investigation resulted in the Spaniard receiving a five-second penalty for standing too far left in his starting box.
Although his advantage over Perez was briefly more than a second, Alonso was being chased by Perez at the end of lap three and with DRS the Mexican was able to pull inside and regain the lead early in lap four.
Alonso stayed with him in the DRS range and although he never made an attack to retake the lead, he was able to slipstream from Perez for a few laps until he was simply unable to get to the Red Bull within a second to approach
From there, the Aston Martin driver eased off, quickly falling to 1.6s behind Perez on lap 11 – a gap that doubled two laps later.
But the race was halted on lap 17 when Lance Stroll – who had previously sensationally passed Carlos Sainz at Turn 13 on the first lap – stalled and parked at Turn 8.
This ultimately spawned a safety car, leading to a series of pit stops among the front runners as they swapped in their middle tires for the hardest compound.
Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin AMR23, Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB19, George Russell, Mercedes F1 W14
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Verstappen was brought level after the safety car restart after pitting with the early lead field and was initially told to prioritize his tires until DRS was activated on lap 23.
This gave him the tools to get past George Russell with DRS at Turn 27 and the Dutchman was subsequently able to catch Alonso to finish in the top two.
Next on the agenda was Verstappen to close the 5.4 second gap on Perez and was able to gain about a tenth per lap – five seconds up to the 30th lap of the track when Perez tried to repair the damage reduce.
The polesitter managed to restore his buffer to around 5.2s on the following lap as he and Verstappen continued to battle for fastest laps. Although Verstappen was largely congruent in time, he was able to continually take away from Perez’s lead.
As the gap dropped below 4.5s, Verstappen began to worry when he felt the drive shaft making strange noises at high speed, restoring Perez’s gap to 5.2s as Red Bull investigated his complaints.
But satisfied enough, Red Bull told Verstappen to go ahead – and meanwhile Perez reported a long brake pedal as the team tried to finish the race.
After the two were reassured about their troubles, Verstappen closed the gap back to 4.3s as radio chatter between the Red Bull drivers and engineers began.
Perez tried to get his team to slow things down while Verstappen kept pushing but when Perez told him it was an open season he opened the taps and started to play an advantage over his teammate who was in the Was able to hang in the low 1:32.
With three laps to go, Perez’s lead grew to six seconds as Verstappen was more concerned about the fastest lap instead, and the lead grew in Perez’s favor to 7.1 seconds from the final lap.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB19, Zhou Guanyu, Alfa Romeo C43
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Verstappen then matched his 1m31.906s to take the fastest lap point away from his teammate, closing the gap to just over five seconds to eventually follow his teammate home as Perez claimed his first win since Singapore last season .
Alonso had initially completed the top three after serving his five-second penalty during the safety car period before his pit stop to stay ahead of pursuers Mercedes and Ferrari.
Russell was told on the radio to hold Alonso within five seconds just to cover the risk of further penalties, but a powerful final lap from the two-time world champion left the Brit outside that margin – and the FIA immediately put him under investigation for wrong Serving the penalty because a member of his team touched the car at the time.
That gave Alonso a 10-second penalty, putting him in fourth place and Russell in third.
Lewis Hamilton ensured both Mercedes made the top five after opting for a counter-strategy, starting on hard pavement and completing a 32-lap stint on the middle compound.
This ensured he could finish ahead of Carlos Sainz, who had previously used his pit stop to pass Stroll after being the object of his ample pass around the outside at Turn 13.
Sainz stayed ahead of Charles Leclerc, who struggled through the order after a 10-place penalty saw him down from 12th, and the Monegasque was able to work his way up to seventh.
Esteban Ocon won the Battle of the Alps and finished eighth, while Pierre Gasly repeated his result from Bahrain in ninth.
Haas came in the black for the season as Kevin Magnussen completed the top 10 after battling with Yuki Tsunoda for the last point in the second half of the race.
The Dane gave the AlphaTauri driver a nudge early on lap 46, denying the Italian team a chance to score their first point of 2023.
Results of the Saudi Arabian F1 GP