Red Bull scored their 114th grand prix victory last weekend, giving them more wins than Williams. Since Red Bull entered Formula 1 20 years ago, Williams has only won a single grand prix.
Williams scored their penultimate victory in the 2004 Brazilian Grand Prix – the last race before Red Bull’s arrival at the beginning of the following year. Red Bull’s ascendancy over the following years coincided with Williams’ decline.
Sebastian Vettel gave Red Bull their first grand prix victory at Shanghai in 2009. Three years later, while the new kids on the block were piling up championship silverware, Williams took their most recent win courtesy of Pastor Maldonado at the Circuit de Catalunya.
Thanks in no small part to the efforts of ex-Williams designer Adrian Newey, Red Bull have returned to dominant ways in recent seasons. With two dozen grands prix per year – 10 more than in Williams’ first season – Red Bull have caught and passed them from a standing start in two decades:
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Max Verstappen scored his ninth consecutive win last weekend, meaning he can equal his record of 10 in a row at the next round. He set that record in Italy last year, failed to win the next race in Singapore, then began his current winning streak, meaning he’s won an astonishing 19 of the last 20 races.
As in Bahrain, Sergio Perez finished second, meaning Red Bull have started the season with back-to-back one-twos again. Last year they did this four times in the first five races but only twice more over the rest of the season.
Verstappen also picked up his 100th podium trophy. Impressively, he took just 187 starts to do so, though when that was pointed out to him he jokingly observed that showed how many podiums he’d “missed”.
“Of course, I’m very happy with that,” said Verstappen. “But I’m not really a guy looking at the stats, I’m just happy to hit 100.”
His latest win came after the 34th pole position of his career, which mean he now has more pole positions than all bar four other F1 drivers: Record-holder Lewis Hamilton on 104, plus Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna and Sebastian Vettel.
Verstappen claimed that pole position with the fastest ever lap of Jeddah, making amends for his near-miss in 2021 when he was on course to claim the top spot until he crashed at the final corner. He has now taken pole at 20 different tracks.
Advert | Become a RaceFans…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…