Max Verstappen is the 2023 F1 world champion. The Red Bull driver closed out his third successive World Championship at the Lusail International Circuit on Saturday off the back of the sprint race.
Verstappen was cutting his way through the field but it was behind him where the business was done as team-mate Sergio Perez was involved in a race-ending collision with Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg.
This has been a sensational year for both Verstappen and Red Bull with the Milton Keynes-based team dominating from the very start of the season in Bahrain. However, it didn’t come easy for the Dutchman in the early stages.
After cruising to victory in the season opener in Bahrain, team-mate Perez hit back in Jeddah, taking his first win of the season at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. The Red Bull duo then traded victories in Australia and Azerbaijan before Checo clinched pole position for the Miami Grand Prix.
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Starting the race from the fringes of the top ten, Verstappen scythed through the field with ease before overtaking his team-mate en route to victory lane. This sensational comeback performance proved to be a turning point in the title race and sparked a winning streak that is now immortalised in F1 history.
From Miami onwards, Verstappen was simply untouchable. While Perez struggled drastically in qualifying and made costly errors in Monaco and Zandvoort, the now-three-time world champion stretched his legs out front, romping to ten consecutive Grand Prix victories as he crushed his opposition.
Aside from putting his third World Championship beyond any reasonable doubt before the summer break was even underway, this ten-race winning streak earned Verstappen his place in the F1 history books, usurping Vettel’s nine-win tally from 2013.
The Dutchman wasn’t without challenge in this period either. Lewis Hamilton took his first pole position since 2021 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, while both Ferrari drivers also kept the P1 grid slot warm during that unbeaten spell, but Verstappen was simply unstoppable.
Singapore proved a stumbling block for Verstappen and Red Bull with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz putting an end to the team’s hopes of clinching an unprecedented clean sweep of Grand Prix victories in 2023, but Verstappen duly bounced back with a characteristically dominant display at Suzuka, headlined by one of the greatest qualifying laps in the sport’s history.
In Qatar came the deciding moment as he sealed his third World Championship, moving him one behind Red Bull legend Sebastian Vettel in the all-time career titles charts and one step closer to Hamilton and Schumacher’s joint record of seven.
