Max Verstappen just broke a Schumacher record nobody else is ever touching

We're not going to sit here and say that this year's Red Bull car is the slowest on the Formula 1 grid, because that wouldn't be true.

What we will say, however, is that, statistically speaking, Red Bull would absolutely be 10th out of 10 in the constructor standings if anybody other than Max Verstappen was driving the car the four-time reigning world champion is driving. Just look at Liam Lawson's numbers and Yuki Tsunoda's numbers as his teammate.

That didn't keep the 27-year-old Dutchman from driving off into the distance in Sunday's Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Verstappen, who is a distant third in the world championship standings, achieved his third win of the year and the 66th of his career at the "Temple of Speed", winning by more than 19 seconds.

It was also incredibly his 32nd in a season his team didn't (or won't) win the constructor championship, breaking the previous record (31 by Michael Schumacher).

Verstappen breaks F1 record no one is touching

Let's be completely real here. This is a record that nobody is ever going to challenge in a sport where the real battles tend to be the behind-the-scenes engineering battles.

Verstappen's tally includes one win in 2016, two in 2017, two in 2018, three in 2019, two in 2020, 10 in 2021, nine in 2024, and now three in 2025. That's 32 wins across eight seasons – seven multi-win seasons – in which his team was not the top team in the sport. Last year, they even finished in third place, making him the first world champion for a team outside the top two since 1983.

Let's have a look at some of the other notable win totals in non-constructor championship-winning seasons posted by several other all-time greats.

We'll start with Lewis Hamilton, who is Formula 1's all-time wins leader with 105. Of those 105 wins, 24 came in seasons his teams didn't win the constructor title, though it's technically only 20, since McLaren were the top-scoring team in 2007 when their constructor championship tally was wiped out due to the espionage scandal, handing the official title to Ferrari.

We first started tracking this stat when Verstappen got his 28th win in the category with a generational 17th-to-1st drive in the rain at Interlagos back in November 2024.

So we're going to look specifically at the other drivers who have 28+ total wins: Sebastian Vettel (53), Alain Prost (51), Ayrton Senna (41), Fernando Alonso (32), and Nigel Mansell (31).

Prost leads that quintet with 21 wins in seasons his teams didn't win the constructor title, follwed by Vettel with 19, Alonso with 18 (really 14, for the same reason as Hamilton), Senna with 14, and Mansell with 10.

Let's flip to active drivers.

This year's world championship battle is between McLaren teammates Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris. Assuming you're not a Formula 1 driver reading this article, their tallies in this category are the same as yours – zero.

That's not a knock on them (though I'm sure some will see it that way). The fact is it's hard to win in Formula 1, and it's historically even harder to do when you're competing for a team not leading the constructor championship.

One of those drivers is poised to become world champion with zero in that category, placing them behind Hamilton, Alonso, Charles Leclerc with eight, George Russell with four, Carlos Sainz Jr. with four, and both Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly with one.

Verstappen has done it 32 times.

Recency bias makes it easy to call Verstappen the GOAT, the same way there was supposedly "no debate" about Hamilton being the GOAT five or six years ago. The reality is there are arguments to be made for several all-time greats.

What's no longer debatable, though, is that Verstappen has earned a seat at that table. He belongs in the GOAT debate, and this incredible stat belongs at the forefront of it.