Formula 1: 5 drivers with more wins than Max Verstappen

Max Verstappen now sits in sixth place on the all-time Formula 1 wins list following the United States Grand Prix. Who is ahead of him?

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen tied two-time Formula 1 world champion Fernando Alonso for sixth place on the all-time wins list with his Japanese Grand Prix victory at Suzuka Circuit, a win which made him a two-time world champion himself.

With his United States Grand Prix victory at Circuit of the Americas this past Sunday afternoon, Verstappen now has now officially passed Alonso for sixth place on the all-time wins list with 33 in 160 career starts.

The win was his 13th of the 2022 season, tying the all-time single-season record set by seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher in 2004 and later tied by four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel in 2013. There are still three races remaining on this year’s 22-race schedule for him to potentially break it.

But perhaps more important historically, there are now just five drivers ahead of the 25-year-old Dutchman on the all-time wins list. At the start of the year, he was tied for 16th place on that list.

Who are those five drivers?

5. Ayrton Senna

Ayrton Senna won 41 races in 161 career starts. The three-time world champion was tragically killed in a crash at Imola in 1994, at which point he was the sport’s second winningest driver of all-time.

4. Alain Prost

Alain Prost won 51 races in 199 career starts. The four-time world champion, one of three drivers on this list to have held the all-time Formula 1 wins record at some point, made his final start in 1993. He initially stopped competing after the 1991 season and took a year off, but he returned for one final year.

3. Sebastian Vettel

Sebastian Vettel has 53 wins to his name in 296 career starts. The four-time world champion is set to retire at the end of the 2022 season.

2. Michael Schumacher

Michael Schumacher owned the wins record for nearly two decades, and by a sizable margin over Prost in second place. With 91 wins in 306 career starts, the seven-time champion, who retired for a second time after the 2012 season, once owned the record by a 40-win margin, a total which would have been just one shy of second highest as its own win total at the time.

1. Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton overtook Schumacher on the all-time wins list in 2020, and he now owns 103 victories in 307 career starts. The sport’s other seven-time world champion hasn’t yet won a race in 2022, so he remains tied with Schumacher on the all-time list of consecutive winning seasons with 15.

How high can Max Verstappen, who is currently under contract with Red Bull through the 2028 season, climb on the all-time wins list? Having won double-digit races in each of the last two seasons, it may not be too far-fetched to suggest he could climb into the top five next year and into the top three within the next few years.

This year alone, he has passed Mika Hakkinen (20), Kimi Raikkonen (21), Damon Hill (22), Nico Rosberg (23), Nelson Piquet (23), Juan Manuel Fangio (24), Niki Lauda (25), Jim Clark (25), Jackie Stewart (27), Nigel Mansell (31), and Alonso (32).