Max Verstappen: Comparing Red Bull driver’s run to four world titles to Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher and more

Max Verstappen has been racing up F1’s most significant statistical tables in recent years and, by winning his fourth world championship title at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, has now joined one of the history books’ most exclusive clubs.

In the space of just 1,079 days, Verstappen has gone from challenging for his maiden title heading into the now-infamous season-deciding Abu Dhabi GP of December 12, 2021 to becoming one of the most successful drivers of all time as a four-time champion.

Have a look at the other drivers he has joined in that group and how the Red Bull driver’s statistics from the past four years match up…

Who are F1’s other drivers with at least four titles?

In 75 seasons of the Formula 1 World Championship, 783 drivers have taken to the starting grid, 115 have won a race and 34 have won a title – but only six have become champion at least four times.

The first of those came in the championship’s first decade, the 1950s, when Argentine star Juan Manuel Fangio claimed his fourth title in 1956, achieved during a single season at Ferrari, before adding one more a year later.

It was another 37 years before anyone reached the milestone of four titles when Frenchman Alain Prost claimed his fourth title in what turned out to be his final season on the grid at Williams.

Michael Schumacher then became the third in 2001 by winning his second title in succession for Ferrari and fourth overall.

Twelve years later and Schumacher’s German countryman and friend Sebastian Vettel won his fourth title on the spin as Red Bull’s first world champion.

Lewis Hamilton made it a club of five with Mercedes in 2017, becoming Britain’s first four-time champion in the process, with Verstappen now the sixth to scale the sport’s summit four times.

How do their stats compare at the same point?

Comparing drivers and their statistics across the generations in Formula 1, like most sports, is fraught with difficulty given the many different variables at play such as season lengths, car reliability and performance levels, and so on.

But some accurate comparisons can be drawn and so, in the two tables below, we have used the six drivers’ respective stats during their first four title-winning years (with Fangio, Hamilton and Schumacher’s numbers from their subsequent championships-winning campaigns excluded) to compare achievements at the same milestone point.

Vettel is the youngest world champion in the sport’s history after racing to all of his championships inside seven seasons by the age of 26.

At 27, Verstappen is the second-youngest to reach the milestone but it has taken the Dutchman – who started his career as the youngest driver in history aged 17 – 10 seasons to get there, only one fewer than Schumacher and Hamilton who started their careers at the top level in their early 20s.

Having raced in Grands Prix for many years in the decade or so before the official world championship began, Fangio was already 38 by time of the sport’s inaugural season in an era when drivers were older than they are now.

Fangio’s fourth title in 1956 was therefore won when he was 45, seven years older than Prost was when the Frenchman claimed his final title in 1993 before retiring.

While season lengths have grown exponentially over the decades – when Fangio won his fourth title there were only eight rounds in the season compared to the 24 of this year – in terms of percentage races won, Verstappen’s first four titles have been achieved with the highest win rate.

The Red Bull driver has won 59 per cent of all races since the start of 2021, including a record 19 out of 22 last year.

Interestingly, despite also being seen as one of the sport’s most one-sided eras, Vettel won slightly less than half the races between 2010 and 2013 on the way to his four titles.

What else has been significant about Verstappen’s 2024 title?

Verstappen’s fourth title-winning year may not have proved as emphatic or record-breaking as his runaway third in particular, but there have still been some further statistical milestones along the way too.

By winning the Sao Paulo GP at the start of November from 17th on the grid, the Dutchman became the first driver in F1 to win from 10 different starting positions, moving him one clear of Fernando Alonso on nine.

Only three drivers have won a race from a lower starting spot.

Verstappen also set a new record, which remains ongoing, of the longest unbroken sequence at the top of the Drivers’ Championship.

Schumacher led the way for 896 days in a row (September 24 2000-March 8 2003) but Verstappen is now up beyond 900 since his current run started back on March 22, 2022 after he won that season’s Spanish Grand Prix.

He also started the season by equalling Prost’s run of seven pole positions in a row from the start of a season and, thanks to topping qualifying at 2023’s season finale in Abu Dhabi, Ayrton Senna’s 35-year-old record of eight poles in succession.

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