F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Verstappen leading Red Bull to 'incredible' place in records

Max Verstappen's success in today's British Grand Prix at Silverstone added a whole new level of recored-breaking success for the driver, as well as for the dominant Red Bull team as a whole.

With Verstappen’s win, Red Bull tie McLaren's all-time record of 11 consecutive wins set in 1988 while Verstappen becomes only the fifth driver in history to have won six consecutive races.

Not even Lewis Hamilton has achieved that in his career. The previous drivers to pull off a back-to-back half dozen wins are Alberto Ascari, Michael Schumacher (who did it twice), Sebastian Vettel and Nico Rosberg.

Verstappen's 11th consecutive podium finish means he is now tied for the fourth-longest run in history. It was also Verstappen’s 29th back-to-back classified finish, tying Daniel Ricciardo for the longest run by a Red Bull driver.

And by taking the bonus point for fastest lap along with pole position and race win, Verstappen took his eighth hat-trick weekend of his career tying him with Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel for fifth in the all-time list.

“Of course I'm very happy that we won again,” Verstappen told the mediain parc ferme after the end of the race. “I mean, 11 wins in a row for the team, I think that’s pretty incredible.

"But it wasn’t straightforward today," he said, following a race in which he lost the lead at the start to the fast-starting Lando Norris starting from alongside him on the front row in the McLaren.

He was soon able to retake the lead on lap 5 and never surrendered it again during the rest of the race, but he had been impressed by the McLaren's pace today.

“I was doing a bit of drifting ... and it felt like I was doing that also in the start, which wasn’t very good," he said. “We’ll look into that because I think the last few starts were actually a lot better and today wasn’t that great.

"Lando didn’t really put up a fight [on lap 5]. He was very nice to me. But then he actually came back again in the DRS, so he had a lot of pace today. He did very well today.

"At least it made it a bit more exciting, I had to push for it," he added.

“Once I’d passed Lando, it took me a few laps to cool down the tyres, and after that I think we had good pace,” he continued. “I think the last ten, 15 laps on that stint, we were nine seconds in the lead again which I think was very good.”

The safety car for Kevin Magnussen's retirement came at just the right time for him to make his sole pit stop of the afternoon, and he blasted away at the restart as Norris and Lewis Hamilton fought it out over second place.

"Because of the safety car, everyone was back together," Verstappen reported. "We had the soft tyre to the end which seemed to overheat a little bit more than I thought, so it was a bit more difficult to keep the pace up.

"Luckily the first two or three laps of that stint, I had already quite a big gap, so I could just manage it to the end.”

Verstappen now moves a whopping 99 points clear of team mate Sergio Perez, who overcame another problematic qualifying to finish today's race in sixth place with a solid bit of damage limitation.

Verstappen’s current tally of 255 points would be enough on its own to give Red Bull first place in the constructors’ standings over Mercedes. As it is, they currently lead their rivals by 411 points to 203.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

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