Max Verstappen looks to continue his steamroller to a third world championship and Red Bull the constructors, what other records could they break with still half the season to go?<\/p>\n
At Spa before the summer break, Verstappen became just the second driver to have claimed eight successive F1 victories. That moves him ahead of\u00a0 Michael Schumacher, Nico Rosberg and Alberto Ascari, who each had recorded seven straight triumphs.<\/p>\n
This weekend, a ninth win at Zandvoort would see him equal Sebastian Vettel\u2019s record of nine consecutive wins, which the German set in a Red Bull during his title-winning 2013 campaign. He could surpass that record as soon as next weekend at Monza, and his form suggests he will.<\/p>\n
Last year Verstappen set the record for the most wins in a season with fifteen in 2022, and he is well on course to up that mark. But the fact the season is longer now meaning it needs to be compared by percentage, by that measure its 83.33% of the twelve races so far.<\/p>\n
2022 saw him win 68.18% of the races while the record is 75% of races by Alberto Ascari in 1952. But the caveat is there were fewer races which were counted towards the championship.<\/p>\n
That leaves him needing six wins in the remaining ten Grands Prix both to better his 2022 total and to stay clear of Ascari’s record win percentage.<\/p>\n
Verstappen can also set a new mark for the most Sprint wins in a season, a cause which is aided by the fact the number of Sprint weekends has doubled to six for this campaign. However, any driver could in theory take that record, if they all three.<\/p>\n
The Dutchman is however the favourite, he has won two of the three sprints so far this season.<\/p>\n
Verstappen isn’t even halfway to Lewis Hamilton’s all-time record of hundred and three race wins, he could move to third on the list by the end of the season.<\/p>\n
Having gone past Ayrton Senna’s forty-one wins earlier in the season, Verstappen’s tally of forty-five has him fifth on the list. His next target is Alain Prost on fifty-one, with Sebastian Vettel just two wins further away. Second to Lewis Hamilton, if he continues his dominance for eighteen months isn\u2019t achievable until early 2025.<\/p>\n
Schumacher\u2019s nine-one wins were once seen as unbreakable, but given the fact we are having around a hundred races every four and a quarter seasons, based on a maximum of twenty-four races, makes it more achievable.<\/p>\n
Verstappen already owns the record for the most podium finishes in a season, which he set by coming in the top three on eighteen occasions on his way to claiming a maiden drivers’ title in 2021.<\/p>\n
He is based on a current form set to break his own points record of four hundred and fifty-four. He is on three hundred and fourteen lead with a maximum of two hundred and eighty-four (winning every Grand Prix plus fastest lap and sprint), to claim.<\/p>\n
Red Bull have already eclipsed McLaren’s long-standing record for the most successive race wins by an F1 constructor. Their current streak, which stretches back to the final race of last season in Abu Dhabi, stands at thirteen. The longer this streak extends, the harder it is to imagine another team – or even Red Bull themselves – coming close to it any time soon.<\/p>\n
The earliest Verstappen could wrap up the title would theoretically be at the Japanese GP in four races’ time on September 24. But that would require him to hold an advantage of at least 180 points. But that is extremely unlikely but Qatar he would only need just under six race wins advantage.<\/p>\n
Red Bull has still several races until they can think about Mercedes’s nineteen wins from twenty-one races in 2016. It could have quite possibly been twenty, but that crash between Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton in Barcelona, which gave Verstappen on his debut for Red Bull his first win.<\/p>\n
Mercedes driver George Russell said after the opening weekend of the season that he expected Red Bull to win every race the season, the comments were largely dismissed as dramatic and no-one seemed to believe him. Five months on, Red Bull are very much looking like being the first team to do that.<\/p>\n
No team has ever won every race in a season, the closest being eleven which they surpassed in Budapest. Red Bull came very close last season to bettering Mercedes’ record of seven hundred and sixty-five points in 2016, falling just six points short of that target.<\/p>\n
Red Bull are currently on five hundred and three, while mathematically possible its unlikely given the inconsistent form of Sergio Perez and if the Mexican can rediscover his early-season excellence, a near unbeatable target could be set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Max Verstappen looks to continue his steamroller to a third world championship and Red Bull the constructors, what other records could they break with still half the season to go? At Spa before the summer break, Verstappen became just the second driver to have claimed eight successive F1 victories. That moves him ahead of\u00a0 Michael<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12428,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[53,137,589,590,754,1283,1637,1642],"class_list":["post-12427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-analysis","tag-53","tag-analysis","tag-dutch-gp","tag-dutch-grand-prix","tag-formula-one","tag-max-verstappen","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-racing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12427"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12431,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12427\/revisions\/12431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}