If more new tracks don’t come to F1, Verstappen will never catch up to Hamilton

Red Bull won another centurion rank, they set two big failure records at the same time, and Verstappen is already threatening the pole-king Senna. Statistical highlights of the Chinese Grand Prix.

Red Bull already achieved its 100th F1 race victory last year at the Canadian Grand Prix, but in terms of starting positions, they only reached this milestone in Shanghai. And while only three teams are ahead of them in the ranking of victories (in fact, they can catch Mercedes even this year after Williams overtook them in Jeddah), in the ranking of poles, only the sixth, Lotus, are ahead of them.

The Fabulous, the Ugly and the Wasted – Big Moments from Red Bull’s 100 Wins

Verstappen was still vulnerable in qualifying last year, but this year he is flawless in this regard as well (fortunately, the sprint pole won by Lando Norris in China is not included in this total). The Dutchman thus secured the pole for the first five races of the season, and the last time Mika Häkkinen was able to start the year in such an overwhelming form on Saturday was in 1999. At the beginning of the season, however, the record is 7 starts in a row, which was set by Alain Prost in 1993 with Williams. However, if Verstappen were to continue the series in Miami and Imola, he would not only set the season-opening pole record, but also the absolute record for consecutive starts. Ayrton Senna holds the record with 8 consecutive stage wins, while Verstappen now has 6 with the end of last year – and could overtake him in style at Imola, site of Senna’s final pole and fatal crash.

19 out of 22 wins was not enough for Verstappen to win sportsman of the year

Verstappen won the Chinese Grand Prix for the first time, which is not so surprising, since the last race in the country was in 2019. At that time, the Dutchman had only five victories in his career, but of the 106 grand prix that passed between the last and the current race in Shanghai, exactly half went to him, and the other half was shared by all the other winners…

It’s the 26th different track Verstappen has won at, with Singapore the only one in this year’s calendar and the 2025 calendar where he hasn’t topped the podium. However, Lewis Hamilton still holds the record for the most victories at different tracks with 31, thanks to the fact that he was able to turn around at several locations during his longer career, and in addition, he also mowed nicely on the tracks used during the pandemic. Therefore, in order for Verstappen to be able to reach the seven-time champion in this regard, he will need even more new tracks and a greater variety of locations – and for now only the arrival of Madrid in 2026 is guaranteed.

Among the unsuccessful, the most successful is the king

For a long time, since 2017, Nico Hülkenberg has held the record for the most race participations without a podium place – he had to start 129 times for this. Since then, the German has been absent from F1 for almost three full seasons, but he returned last year, and now he also set the record for the most races without a win, with his 208th start, he caught up with Andrea de Cesaris and will probably overtake him in Miami. Everyone except Hülkenberg has a podium place in the first ten places of the ranking list of those who have completed the most races without a win, which also shows how much his services are valued in F1 despite his failure – and the lack of outstanding results can primarily be blamed on the performance of his teams, some of which are close to the fire in addition to his own mistake.

Compared to him, Lando Norris is not at all on a war footing with the podiums, but he is suffering from the lack of victory. The Briton was on the podium for the 15th time in Shanghai, which means that at the end of his career he will either surpass Nick Heidfeld in the ranking list for the most podiums without a win, or at least be tied with four other drivers who had to endure 15 podiums before their first victory (they are Patrick Depailler , Jean Alesi, Eddie Irvine and Häkkinen).

“If only Max finishes in front of me, I feel like I’ve won,” said Norris, who then took Kelly Piquet’s place

In addition, Norris shot to the top in Shanghai in terms of the most second places without a win, as he has the same eight as Heidfeld and as many as Depailler had before his first success. Compared to them, Alesi had 6, Irvine 4, and Häkkinen only 3 second places among his first fifteen podium results.

And another long negative streak: Hamilton has been winless for 50 races, which pales in comparison to the ordeal of the two gentlemen highlighted above, but before his bad streak that began at the end of 2021, the Mercedes driver never waited more than ten races between two wins. Could the series be broken this year, or even in the following years with Ferrari?