Formula 1: Max Verstappen forced to play unfamiliar game, but he's already winning

"Picking up the pieces" isn't something you often associate with a driver dominating any racing series, let alone Formula 1, where eras of driver domination very infrequently consist of any level of parity.

But those who paid close attention to the 2023 season know that, aside from three-time reigning world champion Max Verstappen winning 19 of 22 races, the competition throughout the rest of the grid was as stiff as it had been in over a decade.

The idea of "Red Bull domination" was more or less a facade used by the media to downplay Verstappen's achievements; it was all about the second best driver, not the second best team, and there were five different teams that had drivers stake their claim to that status at some point throughout the Dutchman-dominated season.

Now in 2024, with Red Bull's car not nearly as dominant as it was last year, Verstappen has been forced into somewhat of a new role.

Not since the Chinese Grand Prix in April have Red Bull showed up and had inarguably the fastest race car. McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes have all challenged for that top spot at some point during that stretch, and all three, along with Verstappen, have stood atop the podium since early May.

The recent British Grand Prix at Silverstone Circuit, in which Lewis Hamilton secured his first Formula 1 win since December 2021, marked the first time since July 2022 that Verstappen failed to win back-to-back races, as he didn't win the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring either.

For context, Hamilton is Formula 1's all-time winningest driver with 104 Grand Prix victories. Verstappen secured 42 wins between Hamilton's 103rd and 104th wins. Only three other drivers in Formula 1 history have 42 career wins.

Hamilton's win brought an end to Verstappen's 44-race streak of not losing back-to-back races. He had won 35 times during that stretch. Only four other drivers in Formula 1 history have 35 career wins.

Six different drivers from four different teams have stood atop the podium through the first half of the record-breaking 24-races 2024 season. Yet even with the era of Verstappen domination supposedly behind us, the 26-year-old is still the only driver with more than one win, and he owns seven times as many wins as anybody else.

And even during his two-race losing streak, he has managed to build up his lead in the world championship – on both weekends.

At Silverstone, it was clear early on that the pace of the Mercedes and the McLaren were superior to that of the Red Bull. Yet in changing conditions, Verstappen managed to claw his way back from fifth place to finish in second behind Hamilton, extending his championship lead over McLaren's Lando Norris with a late pass for second. He actually came within 1.5 seconds of chasing down Hamilton as well.

In the previous weekend's Austrian Grand Prix, Norris was on the charge late with what was, once again, a resurgent McLaren over a long run. But several unsuccessful attempts by Norris to pass Verstappen ultimately led to contact between the two drivers.

Though both drivers could have done more to avoid the contact, some have suggested that the smart move would have been for Verstappen to let Norris pass him.

That, of course, would have been a lot more feasible had the stewards not conveniently taken their good old time to confirm the five-second penalty that had been issued to Norris for violating track limits more than three times.

Verstappen had no interest in letting the driver second in the championship pass him for a race win, which would have marked a 14-point swing.

As it turned out, Verstappen ended up scoring 10 points with a fifth place finish after the contact, and Norris scored none after being forced to retire, again allowing Verstappen to extend his points lead.

With Verstappen's win in Canada over Norris and Mercedes' George Russell and his win in Spain over Norris, he has now managed to extend his points lead on four consecutive race weekends during which Red Bull's pace was clearly not number one. And during half of that streak, he has done so despite not winning.

This marks an impressive progression from the 61-time Grand Prix winner. Just look back at 2021, when he led more than twice as many laps as Hamilton, who was behind the wheel of the constructor championship-winning Mercedes, yet the two entered the season finale level on points.

When things went wrong for Verstappen in 2021, they really went wrong for him. But nowadays, he manages to pick up the pieces, and dragging a second place finish out of a fifth or even a sixth place car in Great Britain is the latest example.

It makes claims about him "not maturing" even more laughable. But regardless of what is said and written, everybody already knew that.