Max Verstappen’s fourth consecutive drivers’ championship was hard-won, but also statistically preordained.
Every driver in Formula 1 history who has won three consecutive championships has gone on to take a fourth, a pattern Verstappen continued last weekend. Among the four drivers he emulated were Juan Manuel Fangio in 1957 and Michael Schumacher in 2003.
Verstappen also did the same as the only other driver to win a world championship for Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel, in 2013 and his immediate predecessor as champion, Lewis Hamilton, in 2020. Alain Prost is the only four-time F1 champion who did not win four in a row.
The Red Bull driver has now won two titles on a Sunday and two on a Saturday. Prior to Verstappen’s title-clinching drive in the Qatar sprint race last year, no driver had won the world championship on a Saturday since Keke Rosberg in the 1982 Caesars Palace Grand Prix in Las Vegas. The only driver who won the title outside of a Sunday was Nelson Piquet, who became champion in 1987 when Nigel Mansell’s crash during Friday practice ruled him out of the penultimate round in Japan.
The constructors’ championship is yet to be decided, but Ferrari moved closer to leaders McLaren as Carlos Sainz Jnr and Charles Leclerc finished third and fourth. Since the last race weekend Ferrari are now in their longest ever constructors’ championship drought: It’s been 5,866 days since they won the 2008 title, six days longer than the gap between their 1983 and 1999 wins.
George Russell claimed the third grand prix win of his career and led Mercedes to their first one-two of the season. All this also happened at Spa earlier this year, only for Russell to be disqualified due to a technical infringement.
F1 has set new records for competitiveness this year thanks to Russell’s win. He is the seventh different driver to claim more than one win, beating the 1981 record of six. The only exception among the leading four teams is the entirely win-less Sergio Perez.
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Four different teams have now won four races each, which has also never happened before. But of course this was not possible in 30 of the 76 world championship seasons when fewer than 16 rounds were held.
Six different drivers have won the last six rounds: Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris, Leclerc, Sainz, Verstappen and Russell. There…
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