Verstappen beats Hamilton’s winning rate with Imola victory · RaceFans

Max Verstappen’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix victory over Lando Norris was the closest finish to a race for more than two years.

Norris was 0.725 seconds behind Verstappen when he took the chequered flag last weekend. While Lewis Hamilton finished 0.179s behind the Red Bull driver in Australia last year, that race ended under Safety Car conditions. For the last green-flag finish closer than that you have to go back to Verstappen’s victory over Charles Leclerc at Jeddah in 2022, when the pair were separated by just 0.549s.

Verstappen’s third consecutive victory at Imola was the 59th of his career. He has therefore scored as many grand prix wins as the first five Formula 1 world champions combined: Giuseppe Farina (five), Juan Manuel Fangio (24), Alberto Ascari (13), Mike Hawthorn (three) and Jack Brabham (14).

With 59 wins from 192 starts, Verstappen’s winning rate now stands at 30.7%. For the first time in his career his rate is better than that of Hamilton, who has gone over two years since his last win, and has taken victory in 30.4% of his 339 starts:

Verstappen’s victory came from his eighth consecutive pole position. That equalled Ayrton Senna’s record run:

It was also Verstappen’s seventh consecutive pole position since the start of the season. That equalled another record, set by Alain Prost in 1993:

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This was also Verstappen’s 10th consecutive front row start. However he has much further to go to equal that record – Senna managed 24 in a row spanning the 1988 and 1989 seasons.

Red Bull picked up another win and scored…