Formula 1 star
Verstappen insatiable: 200 Red Bull victories the next goal
Max Verstappen celebrates his victory at the Canadian Grand Prix. photo
© Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press/AP/dpa
Serial winners Max Verstappen and Red Bull keep Formula 1 firmly in their grip. Even an animal problem hardly slows down the defending champion on the rush to the third World Cup triumph.
Even a dead bird in the brake shaft can’t stop this Max Verstappen.
The Formula 1 series winner was just as unimpressed by the remains of the unfortunate fowl, which accompanied him half the race in his Red Bull during the never-threatening success in Canada, as he was by historical milestones. The 25-year-old has now won 41 Grand Prix, as many as the legend Ayrton Senna. “Of course I’m proud of it, but I hope it doesn’t stop there and we keep winning races,” Verstappen said quite casually.
The Dutchman accounts for the largest share of the 100 victories that his racing team has now accumulated in Formula 1. Pause and enjoy? Not with Verstappen. “The next goal is 200 wins,” said the sovereign world championship leader.
“Probably that they will win all the races this year”
Given the current form of the double world champion and the superiority of his company car, that could happen pretty quickly. Red Bull has won all eight races of the season, six of them by Verstappen, most recently he won four times in a row. “It is likely that they will win all the races this year unless Aston Martin or we get a lot more power into the car or their cars fail,” said Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton.
The technical improvements in the direct Red Bull pursuers in Montreal did have an effect. But the fact that Verstappen was only nine seconds ahead of second Fernando Alonso at the finish this time instead of 25 seconds and more as before was probably also due to the defending champion’s gentle run and the dead bird thing. “It was still stuck to my car when I came back. It didn’t look that great. I feel sorry for the mechanic who had to remove it,” said Verstappen.
It must almost sound like mockery for the competition when the long-term winner casually leads all laps from pole position and then says: “I don’t think it was our best day.” Now that Verstappen has caught up with the Brazilian Senna in the record books, only the seven-time world champions Hamilton (103) and Michael Schumacher (91) as well as Sebastian Vettel (53) and Alain Prost (51) are ahead of him in terms of the number of victories.
“He’s only 25 years old, but he has the world in his hands,” wrote the Spanish newspaper Mundo Deportivo. The only question left is how early Verstappen will secure his third world title this year. His lead in the overall standings over his team-mate Sergio Perez, who was quite helpless recently, has already grown to 69 points.
“27 percent of all races won”
His employer is also not stingy with superlatives at the moment. No Formula 1 team has achieved 100 victories as quickly as Red Bull. 14 years have passed since Vettel’s first triumph for the Austrian beverage company’s racing team in China in 2009. “We won 27 percent of the races we took part in. That’s an unbelievable statistic,” calculated team manager Christian Horner. Only Ferrari (241), McLaren (183), Mercedes (125) and Williams (114) were more often first.
It’s no wonder that the Red Bull crew travels on to Spielberg for the team’s home game in high spirits. “An incredible atmosphere, euphoria,” expects Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko at the Austrian Grand Prix. Anything other than the next Verstappen victory would almost be a sensation.