Verstappen set records in Formula 1 in 2023
November 26, 2023 5:35 PM
Modified November 26, 2023 5:36 PM

Max Verstappen has improved one Formula 1 record after another in a sovereign season. Red Bull's world champion achieved the most victories in a single season, achieving the highest winning percentage ever, scoring the most podium finishes in a single season and scoring more World Cup points than ever. He also won with the largest points difference ever over number 2 and led the most laps in one season.

The figures confirm the unprecedented dominance of the 26-year-old Dutchman in the most important class of motorsport. With nineteen victories, he improved the record of fifteen victories, which he set in 2022. Michael Schumacher's record from 2004, which stood at thirteen victories for eighteen years, pales in comparison to the record that Verstappen further improved with his victory in the final race in Abu Dhabi.

His winning percentage is 86.36 percent with nineteen victories in 22 races. An improvement on the 75 percent of the Italian Alberto Ascari, who won six of the eight races in 1952. Verstappen also set a record this year with the most victories in a row. After victories in Miami, Monaco, Spain, Canada, Austria, Great Britain, Hungary, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy, he reached ten, one more than Sebastian Vettel's nine in a row in 2013.

A thousand rounds

Verstappen also set the record for most podium finishes in one season. The Dutchman only failed to finish on the podium in the Singapore Grand Prix this year (sixth). With nineteen victories and two second places, he set the new season record at 21 podium places. He also recorded the most victories from pole position in one season. The win in Abu Dhabi was the twelfth time that he turned first starting position into first place at the finish.

The Limburger won the championship with 575 points, the highest number ever. The gap to number 2 in the final standings, his Mexican teammate Sergio Pérez, was also larger than ever with a gap of 290 points. In passing, he added another record in the final phase of the race in Abu Dhabi by becoming the first driver in Formula 1 history to lead more than a thousand laps in one season.

"The king is dead, long live the king!"