Max Verstappen is the pretender to Lewis Hamilton’s F1 records, but will he stay in the sport long enough? Photo / Don Kennedy
Max Verstappen is the pretender to Lewis Hamilton’s F1 records, but will he stay in the sport long enough? Photo / Don Kennedy
As Formula One welcomes in a new season, it promises to not only be a record 24-race season but one full of intrigue, as the twenty drivers taking to the grid bring a blend of experience and youthful exuberance, with three new additions.
The oldest and most experienced driver will be the evergreen Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who is 41 years young it seems, surprising his fellow drivers with his enthusiasm and speed when it might be expected he would by now be retired. 2023 will be his third season since making a comeback in 2021 after a two-year absence from F1, taking the seat at Aston Martin vacated by Sebastian Vettel, who decided last year, his 15th season, was enough.
At the end of last year, all the drivers, except Lewis Hamilton, voted in a secret ballot on the best drivers for the season. Unsurprisingly, two-time world champion Max Verstappen, who won 15 of the 22 races held, was number one, followed by Charles Leclerc, who was the championship runner-up.
There was a tie between Mercedes drivers George Russell and Hamilton for third, and then came McLaren driver Lando Norris. Alonso was sixth, ahead of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who won his maiden GP at Silverstone. Sergio Perez, who won two races and narrowly missed out on second place in the championship, was only eighth equal, along with Williams’ driver Alex Albon and Vettel.
Obviously, the vote taken by the drivers has no official status and is not reflective of where some drivers finished in terms of the championship. But any vote by your peers has to carry some significance, because they will see themselves as having a better idea of the ability and value of one another, as opposed to, say, race fans and team personnel.
In terms of team driver combinations, the most experienced team on the grid will be Aston Martin, mainly courtesy of Alonso’s F1 record of 355 race starts, combined with 122 starts for his new teammate, Lance Stroll.
With a combined 477 race starts, this combo is some way ahead of Verstappen (163) and Perez (235) for a combination of 398, followed closely by Hamilton (310) and Russell (82) for a total of 392. The fourth-highest combination is the Haas pairing of Kevin Magnussen (141) and Nico Hulkenberg (181) for a combined total of 322 starts.
The latter left F1 at the end of the 2019 season, during which he drove for Renault, but did return in 2020 for two races as the replacement for Perez at Racing Point when the latter contracted Covid, and again for two races at the start of last season when Vettel had Covid, at Aston Martin, formerly Racing Point.
Significantly, despite being applauded for his driving performances, and being dubbed “Super-Sub” for his unexpected return to racing, Hulkenberg holds the dubious record of having the most race starts, 181, without scoring a podium finish. It is unlikely Haas will provide any respite from that record, although Magnussen did score a pole position for the Sprint race in the Sao Paulo GP, which he turned into an eighth-place finish.
Fernando Alonso, who celebrated a record 350 race starts in Singapore, is F1’s oldest and most experienced driver. Photo / Don Kennedy
A new driver on the grid will be Oscar Piastro, who joins Norris at McLaren after having had the audacity to turn down a drive with Alpine after a seat became available there, when Alonso surprised everyone except himself and Aston Martin owner Lawrence Stroll by taking Aston Martin’s offer of a two-year contract as opposed to the one year offer, with an option for two years, from Alpine. In one memorable week, Alpine lost the services of a two-time world champion, and in Piastri, someone who many believe is a future world champion. Of course, every driver who sits in an F1 car sees themselves as future champion. American driver Logan Sargeant will join Albon at Williams, and will be hoping he can make an impression, as will Nyck de Vries, who secured the Alpha Tauri seat vacated by Pierre Gasly, who joins his fellow French countryman Esteban Ocon at Alpine.
Those two have an acrimonious history despite being born just six miles from each other, and it will be intriguing to see how Alpine can get the two rivals, who are definitely not friends, to work together to help Alpine retain its fourth position in the Constructors race, having edged out McLaren last year despite some reliability issues, especially on Alonso’s side of the garage.
de Vries has finally made the F1 grid after watching the likes of Verstappen, Leclerc, Russell and Albon, with whom he raced in the lower grades, make it some years ago, while he went off to Formula E as part of the Mercedes team.
Having won that championship in 2021, de Vries returned to F1 as a reserve driver. He never got to race for Mercedes, but he was able to substitute for an unwell Albon in the Italian GP, and his drive to ninth place for Williams is what essentially got him the drive for this season with Alpha Tauri, along with encouragement from Verstappen to give Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko a call, advice he followed which clearly paid off. There will be two Dutch drivers on the grid this season, but at 27 years old, de Vries is two years older than Verstappen.
Red Bull boss Christian Horner recently compared Verstappen to the retiring Vettel, having helped guide the retiree to four world championships between 2010 and 2013.
“I mean, Sebastian was very Germanic in his work ethic. He worked very, very hard,” Horner says. “Max - just a very natural, raw ability that has a hunger and determination like I’ve certainly never seen before. So, very different in so many ways, but very similar in their determination, in their desire to want to win, to want to be the best. Max, whatever he goes on to achieve in his career, has done so much in such a short space of time. At the age of just 25, it’s quite frightening to think what actually lies ahead of him.”
Michael Schumacher was 26 when he won his second title, and Hamilton was 29 when he won his second. But of course, both Schumacher and Hamilton took another five titles to be equally on top with seven titles.
When Schumacher won his 91st grand prix and with it a seventh title, in 2004, his record seemed unassailable. The closest to him at the time was Alain Prost, with 51 wins and four titles.
But once Hamilton joined Mercedes, the team that dominated F1 from 2014 through to 2021, it soon became apparent he could catch and surpass Schumacher’s record of 91 victories, which he achieved in 2020, and now sits on a record 103 race victories.
But his loss on the last lap in Abu Dhabi in 2021 prevented Hamilton becoming an eight-time champion. Still, a total of 103 wins may now be unassailable, Hamilton turned 38 on January 7, so he will know time is catching up with him to secure title number eight, which he has made clear is why he wants to continue racing. His Mercedes contract expires at year-end, but he has already signaled he wants to extend that contract for several more years. He can look to Alonso, who was his teammate in 2007 when Hamilton made his debut with McLaren, for proof there is an F1 life after 40.
Alonso was asked by Auto Motor und Sport how long he felt he could keep on driving.
“As long as I still feel I can give 100 per cent, so definitely another two or three years,” he replied. “At my age, I have to approach many things differently. The training, the travelling, the events in between.”
“Formula 1 takes up more and more of your time. You have to organize yourself well so you don’t get burned out.”
Alonso became disillusioned with F1 when he rejoined McLaren in 2015 after a five-year stint with Ferrari that gave him several wins, and when he was twice runner-up in the championship, but didn’t nab the elusive third title he craves. His four-year stint with McLaren didn’t produce even a podium.
In 2017, Alonso tried to win the Indy 500, as part of his aim to win the Triple Crown, which is victory in the Monaco GP, Le Mans and Indy 500. He led 27 laps, but the car let him down. In his two-year absence from F1, he won the Le Mans 24-hour race, twice, and the Daytona 24-hour race, and also took part in the Dakar Rally. But it was always his plan to return to F1, which he did in 2021 with Alpine, formally Renault, with whom he won his 2005 and 2006 F1 titles.
“My life has always been dedicated to motorsport. And what I’m best at in this sport is driving. If one day I have to quit Formula 1, I’ll do other races.”
Pedro de la Rosa, who raced in F1 from 1999 until 2012, has joined Aston Martin as an ambassador, says ageing in F1 is not the problem it might be in other sports.
“I don’t think motorsport is like any other sport in the fact that, in tennis or in football, when you start ageing, you suddenly start suffering injuries, and then you cannot test or train, and then you start getting into this circle of destruction. But, in motor racing, as long as you have been lucky and you haven’t had a bad accident, there’s no reason to think that if your performance level is not 100 per cent and declining with age, it has to be a decline at a very slow rate, which is difficult to perceive as well or to detect.”
Verstappen has youth - and after nine seasons in F1, experience on his side - but he has already made it clear that breaking records doesn’t interest him, and he recently said if he never wins another title, he will still be satisfied. It remains to be seen whether he has the motivation to continue as Alonso has, and Hamilton is likewise determined to do.
