Max Verstappen said goodbye to his most dominant season in Formula 1; In addition to winning his third consecutive world championship, he also broke many records in history. At 26 years old and with plenty of room to continue extending his records, the Dutch driver has demonstrated near absolute dominance in 2023, suffering just three defeats and ending his career with 19 victories from 22 races in Abu Dhabi.

Carlos Sainz is the only driver to win the race this year without driving a Red Bull (Singapore), as the other two victories that eluded Verstappen went to teammate Checo Pérez (Arabia and Baku). ‘Mad’ Max’s greed is reflected in numbers that leave no room for doubt:

More wins and higher percentage per season

His 19 victories in 22 grand prix gave Verstappen an efficiency percentage of 86.36%, thus surpassing the previous record (75%) held by Alberto Ascari since 1952. More recently the most dominant driver was Michael Schumacher with 13 in 2004. 18 possible wins and a percentage of 72.22%.

More podiums

Max has been on the podium 21 times this year; He had 19 wins, two second places in Arabia and Baku, and his worst result of fifth place in Singapore. He single-handedly exceeded the target he set by entering the penalty area 18 times in 2021.

Most consecutive wins

Verstappen achieved a streak of ten consecutive wins between the Miami and Italian Grands Prix, surpassing the previous record of nine consecutive wins set by Sebastian Vettel during his victorious round at Red Bull in 2013.

Second and first driver to double largest points lead

Despite using the same car as Verstappen in the very strong Red Bull RB19, ‘Checo’ Pérez was unable to come close to his teammate’s records, which he had worried about at the start of the season after stringing together two wins in Arabia. G.P. and Azerbaijan. Verstappen has collected a total of 575 points this year (the 860 points that helped Red Bull win the team title), twice as many as Pérez, who was World Cup runner-up with 285 points. Vettel’s 155 against Alonso in 2013

More points than other teams alone

Red Bull could have won the Constructors’ World Championship this season with a single driver, as Verstappen’s 575 points far exceeded the points collected by two Mercedes drivers, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, who gave their team 1 point in total. He came second on the team with 409 points.

Third driver with most victories in history (54)

Max Verstappen started the season with 35 wins and ranked 6th in the world rankings. Thanks to his undeniable success with 19 wins this year, he increased his personal points tally to 54, which allowed him to overtake Sebastian Vettel (53) and become the driver with the third most victories in F1 history. The tracks of the two drivers ahead of him, Michael Schumacher (91) and Lewis Hamilton (103), are still far away, but with a calendar of 24 races per season and being only 26 years old, Max can catch up with them.

Driver with the most laps led in a year

Verstappen’s advantage was so great that in Abu Dhabi he became the first driver in the entire history of Formula 1 to lead 1,000 laps of a F1 race in one year (1,003 of 1,325 total laps). Max led 75.70% of the laps, another historic record, breaking Jim Clark’s record of 71.47% set in 1963.

Most Grand Prix leads per season

Max Verstappen became the driver to lead by at least one lap (20 laps in total) in the most different grands prix in a year, surpassing Lewis Hamilton’s record (19) set in 2019.

Red Bull and McLaren’s record

Red Bull won 21 of 22 races this year. Only Sainz and Ferrari avoided the plenary session with their victories in Singapore. The energy drink team surpassed McLaren in 1988 with a record efficiency percentage of 95.5%, which achieved 93.8% (15 of 16 wins) in its best season with the legendary duo of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.