Max Verstappen believes it is unlikely that Red Bull will win every race during the 2023 Formula 1 season.
Red Bull has enjoyed a dominant start to the campaign, winning all six of the races staged so far, including the shorter sprint event held in Baku.
It already boasts a lead of 129 points over second-placed Aston Martin in the Constructors’ Championship and has been unchallenged in race pace, leading to suggestions that it could go unbeaten across the course of the campaign.
However, Verstappen says that he expects there will be instances during the season that will see Red Bull fail to climb to the top step of the podium.
“How it looks like at the moment, I think we can [win every race]. But that’s very unlikely to happen,” Verstappen said.
“There are always things that go wrong, you have retirements or whatever.
“We will always get to tracks where maybe it doesn’t work out exactly or whatever, bad luck in qualifying, you make your own mistakes.”
In F1’s history, no team has ever achieved a 100 per cent win rate – in 1988, McLaren won 15 out of 16 races, the closest a team has come to going unbeaten.
Verstappen highlighted that stretches of dominance in F1 is nothing new, suggesting that the sport should undergo fewer regulation changes to achieve a more balanced field.
“The dominance, we’ve always seen this in Formula 1, it’s nothing new,” he said.
“I think the longer you leave the regulations the same, the closer people will get. So maybe this is something that we need to look at.
“You have the odd year or two years where there are two teams fighting, maybe potentially a third team.
“But overall, when you look back at the 80s, 90s, the 200s, the early 2010s and all the way until 2020, it’s been pure dominance of a certain team.”
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