By winning the Las Vegas Grand Prix a week ago ahead of McLaren's Lando Norris (before the McLaren disqualifications), Red Bull's Max Verstappen became the third different driver to win at least six Formula 1 races in 2025, something that has never before been true in a single Formula 1 season.
With two races remaining on the schedule, including today's Qatar Grand Prix, Verstappen's win also confirmed that nobody will reach double-digit victories in 2025. Norris and teammate Oscar Piastri have each won seven of 22 races so far this year.
In 2024, Verstappen became the first driver to win a world championship competing for a team that finished outside of the top two in the constructor standings since Nelson Piquet won the 1983 title. Even for third-place Red Bull, he still managed to win nine races, which led Formula 1.
With nobody reaching 10 wins in 2025 either, it marks the first time since the post-Michael Schumacher era of Ferrari dominance that back-to-back Formula 1 seasons have been contested without a single driver hitting double-digit victories.
Max Verstappen ends 14-year Formula 1 streak
Schumacher broke the all-time record with 13 wins in a single season in 2004, when he won his fifth consecutive world championship and record seventh overall. But nobody managed to win more than seven races in a single season from 2005 to 2010.
Not until now, however, had Formula 1 once again gone back-to-back years without a double-digit race winner. In 2011, Sebastian Vettel became the second driver to win at least 10 races in a year when he won 11, and he tied Schumacher's record in 2013 with 13.
Lewis Hamilton then won either 10 or 11 races in six of the next seven years, only not doing so when he won his fourth world championship with nine victories in 2017.
After Hamilton's 11-win 2020 season, Verstappen won 10 races en route to his first world title in 2021. In 2022, he broke Schumacher's single-season record with 15 wins, and in 2023, he shattered his own record with 19 wins in 22 races.
At most, Verstappen can end the 2025 season with eight wins, but even if he doesn't, neither Norris nor Piastri can reach more than nine.
It's an even more impressive statistic to note when you consider the fact that the 2024 and 2025 seasons both broke the previous record of 22 races with 24-race schedules.
In 2024, when McLaren won their first constructor championship since 1998, Norris won four races and finished second in the driver standings. Piastri won two and finished fourth.
ESPN2 is set to provide live coverage of today's Qatar Grand Prix from Lusail International Circuit starting at 10:55 a.m. ET. Start a free trial of FuboTV now and don't miss what would be the world championship decider!