How Max Verstappen equalled Sebastien Vettel’s record for consecutive race wins

Verstappen navigated his way through a chaotic and dramatic rain-hit Dutch Grand Prix to match Vettel’s effort.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen on the podium after winning the Dutch Grand Prix (Tim Goode/AP) (PA Wire)

Max Verstappen equalled Formula One’s all-time record of nine consecutive race wins in his home Dutch Grand Prix.

The Red Bull driver matched Sebastian Vettel’s achievement and here, the PA news agency looks at how he compares.

Cloud nine

Verstappen has won 11 of this season’s 13 races – with team-mate Sergio Perez taking the other two as the duo surpassed the great McLaren pairing of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost’s run of 11 straight wins in 1988.

Since Perez’s win in Azerbaijan on April 30, Verstappen has won the Miami, Monaco, Spanish, Canadian, Austrian, British, Hungarian, Belgian and now Dutch Grands Prix.

He won from ninth on the grid in Florida, passing Perez with nine laps to go, and his team judged the rain correctly to hold off Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso in Monaco.

Dominant wins in Spain and Canada brought him level with Senna’s career tally of 41 race wins, which he quickly overhauled in Austria.

Victory at Silverstone took him 99 points clear in the drivers’ standings and he shot past pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton on the run to the first corner in Hungary before clinching Red Bull the record for consecutive team wins.

His attention could then turn to the individual landmark and after surging through from sixth on the grid at Spa, he returned from the summer break to beat Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso in a six-lap dash to the chequered flag to match Vettel’s streak, set in 2013.

History repeats for Red Bull

Vettel set the record – also driving for Red Bull, for whom Adrian Newey has been in post as chief technical officer on both occasions – when he won the final nine races of 2013 to surge clear of Alonso and win the title.

His run began in Belgium, where he overtook Hamilton early on and was untroubled thereafter, before dominant wins in Italy, Singapore and Korea and a strategic success in Japan.

The German clinched the title in India and added further wins in Abu Dhabi and the United States before a season-ending success in Brazil made it nine in a row and 13 for the season.

Alberto Ascari has a claim to a share of the record, having won the last six races of the 1952 season and his first three starts of 1953. The run was interrupted by Ascari not entering the Indianapolis 500, which at the time was part of the drivers’ championship and was won by American Bill Vukovich.

Michael Schumacher won seven in a row in 2004, as did Nico Rosberg at the end of 2015 and the start of his 2016 title-winning season.

Schumacher also had a run of six across the 2000 and 2001 seasons while Hamilton’s longest run is five wins, as was Verstappen’s before his current streak.

Verstappen is on track to be the first driver ever to win over 80 per cent of races in a season – beating Ascari’s 75 per cent in 1952, when there were only eight races in total – while he has won almost 94 per cent of the maximum points available with 339 of a possible 362 so far.