Max Verstappen’s 2023 the most dominant F1 season in history،
Max Verstappen’s 17th Formula 1 victory rewrote the record books and established the three-time world champion as the most dominant driver the sport has ever seen over the course of a campaign.
Until Sunday’s São Paulo Grand Prix at Interlagos, the highest winning percentage for a season was that of 75% by the late Italian champion Alberto Ascari, who won six of eight world championship races with Ferrari in 1952 .
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Verstappen’s total from 20 races puts his percentage at 85%, and even if he doesn’t win the remaining two rounds of the season in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi, he will still finish above 77%.
Not that the 26-year-old paid too much attention to statistics when asked how much those numbers resonated with him and motivated him.
“It’s not about that. I mean, it’s not something that means when I joined Formula 1 I need to have a 75% winning record in a season , you know,” he told reporters.
“Those kinds of things happen when everything is working really well. I feel good in the car, the car is very competitive and the team hardly makes any mistakes. So you can have a season like ours.”
“For me it’s just about enjoying the moment and trying to maximize every opportunity.”
Verstappen has a record 15 victories in 2022, but an unprecedented run of 10 successive victories from May to September and a new continuous streak of five consecutive victories could see him finish this year with 19 from 22, a win rate by 86.3%. .
His 19 podiums over the year also constitute a record, although in the past the seasons were much shorter, as were the 524 points scored, although the scoring systems have also become much more generous.
He led 922 laps, another record for a season, and counting.
The gap between him and his teammate Sergio Pérez, second in the standings, is 266 points, far more than the record gap of 155 points between first and second, set by Sebastian Vettel with the same team in 2013.
This same gap is also larger than the total points accumulated by Vettel (256) during his 2010 title victory.
Verstappen has led the championship standings for two seasons, since the May 2022 Spanish Grand Prix, and is guaranteed to finish the season with a record 39 consecutive races as leader.
He has won more times (11) from pole position in a season than any other driver, having last year set a record for the most wins in a season without a pole position (nine ).
Red Bull’s 19th victory of the campaign equaled Mercedes’ 2016 record and broke its rivals’ record from that same season for most laps led (1,055).
