Max Verstappen: The year of the Lion
When you look up the word “domination” in the dictionary it will have Max Verstappen’s 2023 season below it as an example. Winning 19 out of 22 races in a single season and getting a win percentage of 86.4%, this was a season centred around the Dutch Lion.
At the opening Grand Prix in Bahrain, we all thought that a title fight between Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes would ensue throughout the season. We thought this because Ferrari had challenged Red Bull for the title the previous season until reliability and team mistakes cost them vital points. As well as them, Mercedes also finished the 2022 season on a high, getting a win in Brazil and finishing third in the championship, and with upgrades arriving for the next season, the fans had hope. Little did we know the car that Adrian Newey and Red Bull had created for the 2023 season…
THE RB19 IN ALL ITS GLORY…
The first sign that Max Verstappen and the RB19 were going to dominate the season was the Bahrain GP result. After getting a good start, Max quickly gained an advantage over the other drivers on the grid and grew his lead throughout the race, gaining multiple seconds a lap. Sergio Perez, Verstappen’s teammate, was also having a good race as the RB19 proved to be a very quick car, putting the Mexican in second place after overtaking Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc on lap 41. By the time the chequered flag fell, Verstappen had won the race 11 seconds ahead of Perez and 38 seconds ahead of Alonso in third, a massive gap considering all the other team’s upgrades made during the winter break and also a sign of the dominance that would follow.
At the next race in Jeddah, Perez was the quickest driver on track, getting pole in qualifying and putting some fast times on the board in free practice. In the race itself, Perez held his own against Verstappen, holding the Dutchman back and allowing himself to win the race by 5 seconds, with Max finishing behind him to get another Red Bull 1-2 finish of the season. This win meant fans started to get excited thinking that a title fight between Perez and Max would happen for the rest of the season, reminiscent of the 2016 title fight between Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton in Mercedes. Verstappen then won the Australian GP in the next race and Perez won the Grand Prix in Baku. Maybe a title fight was to occur after all…
However, Perez’s form dropped off significantly after the Baku GP, making one too many mistakes consistently race after race, losing valuable points. This drop in form allowed Max to gain quite a significant lead in the championship heading into the summer break, winning every single race after Baku, minus Imola as that was cancelled due to flooding.
At the summer break, Verstappen was nearly 200 points ahead of Perez in the standings, creating the biggest gap we’ve ever seen in the championship points between first and second since Nigel Mansell and Jaques Villeneuve in 1992. Max also had enough points to be ahead of the majority of other teams in the constructors championship.
Coming back from the break Verstappen had the opportunity to break one of the most impressive records seen in the sport, which was held by former Red Bull driver, Sebastian Vettel. He held the record for most consecutive wins in a single season, sitting at 9 victories in a row. Max, however, nearly beat this record TWICE in one season! He first beat Vettel's records by getting 11 wins in a row, starting in Miami and ending at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza. He nearly beat Vettel’s record again after losing his streak at the Singapore GP to Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz. Starting again in Japan, Max won every race up to the end of the season in Abu Dhabi, which meant he won another 7 races in a row. An impressive feat that will be hard to beat for a long time.
Verstappen managed to win his third championship in a row without any competition, claiming the title in the Qatar GP sprint race, which is the first time that a driver has ever won a championship that wasn't in the main race on Sunday. By the end of the season Max had accumulated 575 points, the most points ever achieved by a single driver in the sport. Perez managed to finish second in the driver’s championship after his lack of form and while being fought by Lewis Hamilton, but he only had 285 points, less than half the points that Max had! Verstappen also beat every constructor by himself with the points he had accumulated throughout the season, which is no small feat. Talk about a one-man army!
Clearly, 2023 was Max Verstappen’s year as he had the most dominant season I think we've ever seen and ever will see in the future of the sport. He shattered pretty much every record he could’ve in a single season with the RB19 that the wizard Adrian Newey had created. I’ll try to summarise every record that the Dutch international broke during the 2023 season:
highest percentage of wins in a season
most wins in a season
most consecutive wins
F1’s only driver to win three times in one country during a single season
most wins from pole in a season
most consecutive wins from pole position
most hat-tricks in a season
most points in a season
most podiums in a season
most consecutive top-two finishes
most laps led in a season (1003!)
highest percentage of laps led in a season
most pit stops by the winning driver in one race
F1’s biggest points gap between first and second in the championship
F1’s most races left in a season before championship win
most consecutive points scored
highest percentage points difference between first and second in the championship
most consecutive races as championship leader
As you can see, quite a lot of records were broken. This season also saw Verstappen get his 54th win of all time, beating Vettel’s record of 53 wins. He now sits behind only two other drivers for most wins in a career; Schumacher and Hamilton. This statistically means that Verstappen is now the third-greatest driver of all time, and he's only 26! Truly a generational talent, this was his year and something that we’ll be speaking of in the future, and to think, Max’s contract lasts until 2028, so who knows how many records he'll break and how many more times we’ll hear the Dutch national anthem on the podium…
