Max Verstappen Clinches Third Consecutive Formula 1 Championship

Max Verstappen finished second in Saturday's Formula 1 sprint race ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix, scoring enough points to secure his third consecutive World Driver's Championship. Verstappen becomes the 11th driver to secure three or more world championships, joining Lewis Hamilton as the only active driver with more than two.

Verstappen's title, a rare championship clinched on a Saturday, has been an inevitability for just about the entire 2023 season. He has finished worse than second in a grand prix just once, a fifth-place finish in Singapore that ended an all-time record 10-race win streak. A combination of an almost unbeatable Red Bull, 22-race calendars, and a massive in-race pace advantage over teammate Sergio Perez have led Verstappen to win 28 races over the past two seasons, taking both championships with what looked from the outside like little to no effort.

Those 28 wins alone would make Verstappen the ninth-winningest driver in Formula 1 history, beating out legends like Jim Clark and Juan Manuel Fangio. He still has six more races to increase that win total over two years even further. While McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes have all inched closer to Red Bull on pace this season, Verstappen should still enter each of those six races as the favorite to win.

At exactly three championships, Verstappen draws level with Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet, and Ayrton Senna. Only Alain Prost, Sebastian Vettel, Juan Manuel Fangio, Michael Schumacher, and current rival Lewis Hamilton stand in front of him on total championships. As Verstappen is just 26 and has a decade or more to secure another five titles and pass Hamilton at seven, the sport is inching closer and closer to a world where the controversial "Abu Dhabi 2021" safety car procedure is the moment that determined the specific driver that would hold the all-time record for individual championships.

Verstappen's accumulation of wins, poles, and titles over the past three seasons is as good as any in history. With an entire offseason only giving Red Bull Racing more distance on the field and two more years until a 2026 ruleset refresh, Verstappen and his team seem to be in position to chase more records together through the middle of the decade.

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