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LUSAIL, Qatar — From the moment Max Verstappen first got his hands on Red Bull’s new Formula One car for 2023, he had a good feeling about this season.
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Even through his sweep to his second drivers’ championship in 2022 with a record 15 wins, Verstappen was always pushing to make improvements. For a driver with such an innate feeling of how the car connects to the road, he knew what had to be done to unlock even more performance.
That step forward from Red Bull helped elevate Verstappen to another level in 2023. His championship victory has been one built on domination, including a record-breaking 10 consecutive victories from Miami to Monza, that has left his rivals incapable of answering back.
Yet even through a year where Verstappen’s wins felt like they blurred together at points, the season has not been without its defining moments. Races that could so easily have swung another way shaped Verstappen’s march to the championship.
Without his struggles in Azerbaijan, composure in Monaco, or total domination of the Austria weekend, Verstappen’s year could have looked different. Here’s what has stood out in an historic year.
Pre-season testing and the GP in Bahrain showed Verstappen his car could take him a long way. (Giuseppe Cacace/AFP via Getty Images)Bahrain: The warning shot
Verstappen was particularly vocal about the weight of Red Bull’s 2022 car, the RB18. Most of the teams struggled to get close to the weight limit with the revised technical regulations, making it a challenge to shave off a couple of kilos where possible in order to make the car more agile and responsive — characteristics that Verstappen in particular thrives off.
While Red Bull took steps through last season, the introduction of the RB19 was where the weight cut really stepped up a notch. It made the car nicer to drive and more predictable. Verstappen’s performance through preseason testing bred confidence internally. While Ferrari and Mercedes were fighting their own fires, Red Bull was skipping into the distance.
There is always an uncertainty before the first race, when there’s no longer any advantage to sandbagging or hiding pace. It made Verstappen’s dominant victory in Bahrain, finishing 11 seconds clear of Sergio Pérez and 38 seconds ahead of Fernando Alonso in third, a warning shot. The performance had George Russell talking up a perfect season for Red Bull, a prediction that would prove correct right up to race 15.
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Bahrain also proved to Verstappen he had a car that could take him a long way this year, even if he was eager to manage expectations at the time. “It’s a good start,” Verstappen said after his victory. “But we know throughout the season we have to keep on developing.”
Saudi Arabia: An early setback against Pérez
Things haven’t always gone Verstappen’s way this year. While Red Bull’s reliability has largely been bulletproof, a driveshaft failure in qualifying resigned Verstappen to starting 15th in Jeddah.
The Dutchman delivered a major fightback, battling up to fourth after the pit stops and then quickly moving up to second place, leaving only Pérez ahead of him on the track. A famous comeback victory was on the cards.
Pérez had other ideas. He went toe-to-toe with Verstappen, holding the gap steady while the duo lapped over a second faster than the rest of the field. Some late vibrations caused concerns about Verstappen’s driveshaft potentially failing again, but that did not stop him from snagging the fastest lap — something that irked Pérez, who had dropped his times in the closing stages and thought he had the bonus point sewn up.
Verstappen hopped out of the car at the end of the Azerbaijan GP disappointed with second place, but he knowing he’d learned plenty. (Tofiq Babayev/Xinhua via Getty Images)Azerbaijan: Losing a race, finding an edge
The Azerbaijan Grand Prix at the end of April was perhaps the most influential moment in Verstappen’s championship year — and he didn’t even win.
After losing to Pérez in the Saturday sprint race, Verstappen wanted to hit back in Sunday’s grand prix. He took the lead at the start, only for the timing of the safety car to work against him, coming out right after he pitted. It meant Pérez could pit under the safety car and move back into the lead, again requiring a Verstappen fightback.
There was nothing Verstappen could do. Just as in Saudi Arabia, however hard Verstappen pushed, street-circuit specialist Pérez had an answer. By the middle of the race, Verstappen knew he wasn’t going to win. So he took a step back and used the time to learn some more about his car.
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“I was just trying a lot of different combinations on the wheel, to get a bit more of an understanding, because it was still so early in the season,” Verstappen explained in Qatar on Thursday. “Towards the end of the race, I found my rhythm, I found my preferred balance. It helped to just find a little bit more of an edge.”
Verstappen hopped out of the car at the end of the race understandably disappointed with second place, but he knowing he’d learned plenty. “It’s not like I suddenly turned the car upside down,” he said. “But little details can make the difference”
Those little details would unlock another step in performance for Verstappen and Red Bull, laying the foundations for the sequence of victories that would follow.
Miami: Starting the streak
By the time F1 arrived in Miami, the paddock was chatting about a potential Verstappen vs. Pérez championship fight. They were tied 2-2 for wins and only six points apart in the championship. Could Pérez sustain a challenge?
Verstappen clapped back in fashion. From ninth on the grid, he clawed his way through the field before overtaking Pérez, who’d started from pole, for the win in the closing stages, simply boasting too much pace for his teammate to live with. His drive made victory look inevitable, no matter how far back he started.
It would light the fuse for Verstappen’s streak of 10 victories, and deal a strike back against Pérez. But the Mexican’s hopes would face a bigger blow when F1 returned to Europe.
While Verstappen led again in Monaco, teammate Pérez started off a rough streak. (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)Monaco: Qualifying magic as Pérez crashes out
Monaco was a big weekend of divergence in the two Red Bull drivers’ fortunes in 2023.
You wouldn’t know Verstappen isn’t a huge fan of street tracks based on his qualifying display. A titanic tussle for pole saw him edge out Aston Martin’s Alonso with a magic lap to cap off a Q3 for the memory books.
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Verstappen would convert it into the win on Sunday, dealing with the late rain shower. But the greater shift for his championship was what happened to Pérez, who crashed in Q1 and started at the back of the grid.
Pérez would later cite the crash as impacting his confidence in the RB19 car. The team’s development path through the year also shifted away from his driving style, something he began to feel more sharply around the Spanish Grand Prix.
“Barcelona (the race after Monaco) was quite a turning point,” Pérez said. “I was always chasing the weekend. Sometimes you have weekends where things are coming a lot more naturally, and you are just two or three steps ahead. Since Barcelona, I was starting to struggle and have some deficits with the car.”
Austria: Max points for Red Bull
Once F1 returned to its more traditional circuits through the summer European swing, Verstappen turned the screw on Pérez in the title race. No weekend better summed up his dominance than Austria, where he came away with maximum points after sweeping the weekend. He led every single practice session and stage of qualifying, as well as winning the sprint race.
Although it didn’t mark a massive points shift, given Pérez was able to recover to third in a chaotic race marred by track limits confusion, it only drove home the performance gap between the two Red Bull drivers.
Through the run of European races, Verstappen was untouchable. There were flashes of a challenge from McLaren at Silverstone and Ferrari at Monza, yet neither could ultimately match Verstappen’s pace.
It started to become a question of when he would be crowned champion, not if.
Italy: Verstappen’s perfect 10
That Ferrari challenge at Monza was the hardest Verstappen had to work through his winning streak. Carlos Sainz took an emotional pole position in front of the tifosi as Ferrari doubled down on its straight-line speed advantage, giving it a real shot at battling Red Bull.
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That battle lasted the opening quarter of the race. Sainz was staunch in his defense in the lead, only for a small mistake to open the door. Verstappen didn’t need another opportunity, grabbing P1 and marching off to his record-breaking 10th straight win.
Verstappen has never been one to care much about records, but he appreciated the enormity of what he’d achieved at Monza. Similar to Sebastian Vettel’s streak of nine wins in 2013, it will be the statistic that his third world championship will always be hooked around.
Even on a rough Singapore weekend that snapped his winning streak, Verstappen performed well, finishing fifth. (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)Singapore: The exception to the rule
Where Azerbaijan showed that defeats can be valuable, Singapore was simply a rough, miserable weekend for Red Bull.
It did not come entirely out of the blue. In the aftermath of his Monza win, Verstappen made clear that Singapore could be a trickier weekend for the team. For him to drop out in Q2 along with Pérez was far beyond the kind of struggles most had anticipated. Red Bull’s perfect season ended in sudden, spectacular fashion.
Red Bull said its Singapore’s woes were down to the track layout and characteristics simply bringing out the worst of the car’s inherent problems. It would at least be an educational weekend.
And it was still one where Verstappen performed to a very high level. He recovered to fifth in the race, while Pérez only finished eighth. It meant the title could not be won at the next race in Japan — yet that wouldn’t stop Verstappen delivering a reminder of his advantage.
Japan: Verstappen strikes back
After taking pole by over half a second on Saturday at Suzuka with a lap talked up as one of the greatest in recent memory, Verstappen said anyone who thought Red Bull’s advantage had disappeared could “suck an egg.” Talk of the impact of F1’s flexi-wing clampdown was silenced in the most emphatic, dominant fashion.
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Verstappen wanted to make a point in Japan. He’d taken out his anger on the padel court with Christian Horner earlier in the week, even telling Red Bull’s team principal he would like to win the race by 20 seconds. His final margin of victory was 19.3 seconds.
It also provided another contrast to Pérez, who endured a miserable race. First-corner contact forced an early stop for a new front wing, only for a bigger, clumsy incident to follow when he crashed into Kevin Magnussen. For all the work to get closer to Verstappen’s level of performance, Pérez looked very far away again — and had made Max’s job to secure the title in Qatar even easier.
Qatar: The clincher
Winning the championship in a sprint race was always going to be slightly underwhelming, but Verstappen wanted to finish the job on a high. Pole on Friday showed he had the pace, only for Saturday to prove trickier. He qualified third behind the two McLarens, and started poorly, falling back to fifth on the run to Turn 1 — still in position to win the championship.
Verstappen didn’t even need to wait until the end of the race for things to be sewn up. As Pérez scrapped outside of the points with Esteban Ocon and Nico Hülkenberg, contact left the Red Bull in the gravel and out of the race. With eight laps to spare in the sprint, Verstappen was confirmed as champion.
Pole-sitter Oscar Piastri had enough pace to keep Verstappen at bay and win the sprint by two seconds, leaving the Dutchman to settle for P2. But it did nothing to reduce the enormity of the moment or the achievement.
“Unbelievable guys,” Verstappen said on the radio after crossing the line. “An incredible year. Thank you for providing me with such a car, it’s been a pleasure this year.”
(Lead image: ANP via Getty Images, Eva Marie Uzcategul T/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images, Mark Thompson/Getty Images, Ryan Pierse/Getty Images; Design: Eamonn Dalton/The Athletic)
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