The defending champion stretched his points lead over Charles Leclerc by taking control of events at Spa, moving into first place as early as lap 12 of 44 before cruising to a 18s win.
With the Red Bull RB18 proving so effective in a straight line to allow Perez to dart past polesitter Carlos Sainz on the long Kemmel Straight, the Mexican brought home second.
Meanwhile, Sainz completed the podium ahead of George Russell as Lewis Hamilton retired following an opening lap crash with former McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso.
Despite topping qualifying over Sainz by a mighty 0.6s, Verstappen was dropped into the pack for exceeding his allocation of power units – but an electrical glitch on the grid for AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly promoted Verstappen to start 13th, one spot over Leclerc.
That appeared to leave it up to second-starting Perez to take the fight to Sainz, but he fluffed his launch to drop to fifth into Les Combes behind both Mercedes and Alonso.
With the medium tyre RB18 bogging down, soft-starting Sainz was afforded an easy run through La Source to consolidate first place ahead of the Alpine as Hamilton tucked into Alonso’s tow on the climb up the hill.
But the pair made contact into Les Combes. Alonso appeared to be fully over the inside kerb, but was pinched by the W13 as Hamilton’s rear-right clonked the Spaniard’s front-left tyre.
That launched the Mercedes’ back axle into the air and although the seven-time champion initially rejoined, he was very slow and swiftly parked up with a loss of water pressure.
Carlos Sainz, Ferrari F1-75, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13, Fernando Alonso, Alpine A522, George Russell, Mercedes W13, the rest of the field at the start
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
The yellow flags then morphed into a full safety car after Nicholas Latifi and Valtteri Bottas came to blows at the exit of the chicane, with the Alfa Romeo ending up in the gravel.
As 14th-starting Ocon messed up the corner to run over the inside sausage kerb, it appeared to put Latifi off line as he ran wide and kissed the gravel to pitch the Williams into a spin.
Bottas was innocently collected and turned around to retire. However, both this and the Alonso-Hamilton bash passed without penalties after investigation.
However, Hamilton was given with a warning for not visiting the medical centre despite his shunt exceeding the stipulated impact limit.
Sainz lost his initial 2.1s lead over…
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