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Over the 74 years of Formula 1, there have been 1,615 occasions of drivers being classified in the world championship.
In 2023, Max Verstappen achieved more throughout his world championship-winning season than all the other 1,614 campaigns in the history of the sport.
Whether Verstappen was the best driver in the grid this year is of no debate. Even his most hardened detractors could not reasonably claim that the world champion did not perform at an exceptionally high level throughout the season.
Statistically, Verstappen’s year was unlike any seen before in the sport. A total of 19 grand prix victories from 22 starts – a winning rate of 86.36%. An unprecedented tally of 575 points – a margin of 290 over his nearest rival at the end of the championship. Leading 1,003 grand prix laps over the course of the season – obliterating Sebastian Vettel’s previous record by 264. He may not broken any qualifying or fastest lap records, but no driver has ever been so dominant on Sundays (and Saturday in Las Vegas) as the now three-times champion was in 2023.
It would be easy to point to the relentlessly fast, unstoppably reliable RB19 that Red Bull provided him as a reason for his unparalleled success, yet that would fail to give him the credit that he fully deserves. After all, the 2023 championship featured a historically tight field in which the order behind Red Bull fluctuated from round-to-round. Red Bull were always on top – except for Singapore – but the fact so many races finished with the RB19 lapping only a handful of rivals or even none at all showed that its performance advantage was nothing compared to the most legendary and dominant cars from Formula 1’s history.
No, Red Bull set multiple new records in 2023 precisely because Verstappen was able to get the best out of it every time he climbed into the cockpit. It’s telling how team mate Sergio Perez – a multiple race-winner – managed only two victories in the same car. And even then, he required something to go wrong for Verstappen to do so.
In Saudi Arabia, the second round of the season, a sudden driveshaft failure in qualifying left Verstappen down in 15th on the grid. But by half distance, he was already up to second place. If he had started from near the front of the field – where he most likely would have – it’s highly debatable whether Perez would have held his team mate off over the race distance. Similarly in Baku, Perez seemed to have genuinely strong pace on the Sunday. But the timing of the Safety Car allowed Perez to jump Verstappen in the pits, and his pace on the day allowed him to stay there – a situation which never recured.
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After losing in Azerbaijan, Verstappen said he learned something valuable about the RB19 from that afternoon behind his team mate. Whatever that was, it appeared to be fatal to Perez’s championship bid over the rest of the year.
At the next race in Miami, Verstappen made his first costly mistake of the season, ruining his first Q3 attempt with an error. Although he had a second lap to redeem himself, he never got the chance to as Charles Leclerc’s crash ended the session, leaving him ninth on the grid. But while Perez led from pole, Verstappen carved through the cars ahead to be second by lap 15, then chased down his team mate and passed him to win by five seconds in a crushing psychological blow to his only competition for the championship.
That Miami triumph started a historic run for Verstappen. He won every grand prix over the next four months to break the decades-old record for most consecutive grand prix victories with a 10-race winning streak. At every point, he never looked like being in serious peril of defeat. But at Spa-Francorchamps, Verstappen had to work hard for his sprint race and grand prix wins. He chased down Oscar Piastri on Saturday after falling behind pitting for intermediate tyres, while he dropped from pole to sixth on the grid prix grid after a gearbox penalty and still won comfortably by over 20 seconds.
Max Verstappen
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Even when Red Bull suffered their sole poor weekend of the entire season in Singapore, Verstappen was still one of the best performers on the circuit. He rose up from 11th on the grid to take fifth place right behind Leclerc and could have easily finished higher up had the Safety Car not been deployed at an inconvenient time.
As the season progressed, it was as if Verstappen only grew more powerful. He was untouchable at Suzuka, fastest in all three practice sessions, taking pole by half a second, holding off the McLarens of Piastri and Lando Norris at the start and pulling away for another controlled victory. He had to settle for second in the sprint race in Qatar after being beaten by Piastri in both Saturday sessions, but he dominated on Sunday, leading every lap of the race for victory number 14.
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He was not flawless, as his error in Friday’s qualifying at Circuit of the Americas showed. But while he lost pole position for the grand prix due to a track limits infringement which dropped him to sixth on the grid, he moved his rivals aside to reclaim the lead and take his 50th career victory. A week later, he was beaten to pole by Leclerc in a straight fight in Mexico. But there was nothing the Ferrari driver or anyone could do to keep him from another Sunday stroll to the chequered flag.
By the end of the season, Verstappen arrived in Abu Dhabi with two goals; take his 19th victory of the season and breach the 1,000 laps led barrier while doing so. Naturally, he achieved both, ending his year not just with his third world championship title but heading into the winter on the back of a seven race winning streak and 17 wins from the last 18 rounds of the season.
Not only had Verstappen set other-worldly benchmarks of achievement that likely will never be beaten, he had made the RB19 the most successful Formula 1 car ever built almost single-handedly. Throughout every race weekend his standard had never been lower than ‘great’, while ‘excellent’ had been the norm.
Although winning had become so routine for Verstappen in 2023 that it robbed fans of much of the excitement and intrigue that they tune in for every grand prix Sunday, it was clear all season long that Verstappen’s was a special season – one that will forever be held up among the greatest year-long performances and championship winning campaigns ever fought in the sport.
Some may not have enjoyed witnessing it as so many classic seasons of old, but there was no question that Max Verstappen was the best driver on the grid in 2023, or that he put in one of the all-time best driver performances Formula 1 has ever seen.
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