Max Verstappen’s win at the 2023 Hungarian GP was his seventh consecutive of the season, but more importantly it marked a new record of 12 race wins in a row for Red Bull, a record which the Dutchman hopes can be extended “for a long time.”
Photo Credit: Oracle Red Bull Racing
The championship leader had struggled with the balance of his RB19 throughout the weekend, and after missing out on pole position by the slender margin of 0.003s to his arch-rival Lewis Hamilton, Verstappen made amends on Sunday by getting a flying start and jumping the Briton at the first corner, and from there onwards he completely dominated the race without any major threats, to win for a seventh consecutive time and stretch Red Bull’s winning run even further.
Speaking after the race, the Dutchman praised the work done by his team to improve race starts – something which let him down in Silverstone two weeks ago, as Lando Norris stormed through on the first corner – and commented on his brief battle with his 2021 title rival Lewis Hamilton:
“I think we had a really good start, so I’m very happy with that. We’ve been working on that quite a bit with the car to try to really a good ‘bite’,” said Verstappen. “And then I knew of course when I had the inside that the corner was mine.
“It was close [with Hamilton]. It was just late on the brakes, heavy car, so luckily it all worked out well,” he said of his brief battle with his rival. “From there onwards I could do my race, and today the car was really, really quick.”
He admitted that his struggles with qualifying pace may have been well worth the momentary loss, as it provided him with a “rocketship” of a race car as he described on the radio, and doubled down on it when reflecting on his huge winning margin of over 33 seconds:
“I think over one lap, this weekend was a bit of a struggle, but maybe it was probably a good thing for today – the car was good on any tyre and we could look after the tyre wear, and basically that’s why we could create such a big gap.”
This latest triumph marks Red Bull’s 12th consecutive F1 race win, stretching all the way back to the final race of the 2022 season, in Abu Dhabi, meaning it has now broken McLaren’s long-standing record of 11 that was unbeaten since 1988. Verstappen said it is “enjoyable” to work with his team and praised the mentality of always searching for improvements that is yielding its results now:
“I mean, for the team 12 wins in a row is just incredible,” he said. “What we’ve been going through the last two years is unbelievable, and hopefully we can keep this momentum going for a long time.
“And also just to work with the whole team, is always very enjoyable. It’s always very enjoyable and it’s always good to look into [improvements that can be made] – like yesterday, for example, to keep pushing pushing and always wanting to do better – and a day like today is just perfect.”
Verstappen now leads the drivers’ championship by a whopping 110 points over his team-mate Sergio Perez, and Red Bull leads the constructors’ championship by 229 points over Mercedes, as the season reaches its halfway point.
