Home-turf GPs saw Max’s consecutive wins tally equal Ascari and Vettel’s record. Mark Hughes reports on the latest routs
Belgian GPDutch GP
Max Verstappen was born in Belgium to a Belgian mother. But a Dutch father. He says he feels Dutch. So he had two consecutive home grands prix, one at Spa before the summer break, one at Zandvoort afterwards. It was a neat arrangement, especially when in winning them both he equalled the all-time record of nine consecutive grand prix victories (shared with Alberto Ascari and Sebastian Vettel). He dominated on each occasion, though in quite different ways.
If you wished to construct a circuit showcasing the Red Bull RB19’s superiority to the full, it would look a lot like Spa-Francorchamps – because of the extreme demands it makes of aerodynamic efficiency, with its two flat-out sectors sandwiching a longer one which demands high-speed downforce. The bigger the conflict between those two demands, the bigger the advantage superior aero efficiency will bring. The RB19, in deriving a bigger proportion of its total downforce from the low-drag underbody and less from the high-drag wings, is by far the most aerodynamically efficient car on the grid.
If you wished to create a track which maximised the lap time rewards of Max Verstappen’s talents, it might also look a lot like Spa-Francorchamps, because of the conflicts between a) the slow corners of the Bus Stop, La Source and Les Combes and b) the long fast corners of that middle sector. The slow corners require quick direction-change response. The fast ones require rear-end stability. In set-up terms, those requirements oppose each other. Any driver who can live with some instability at high speed can run a set-up which will buy chunks of lap time in the slow corners by minimising understeer. That’s Max Verstappen.
So with the combination of Red Bull, Verstappen and Spa, the margin of superiority over the field was immense. Even by the epic standards of Verstappen’s dominant 2023 season. It happened this way here last year too. Just like in ’22, a grid penalty (for a gearbox change this time), was but a minor inconvenience on his route to the front and subsequent comfortable victory.
Verstappen had qualified fastest by 0.82sec over Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari on Friday when the damp conditions meant no DRS deployment. For the Saturday Sprint event Verstappen had qualif
