General
Dominant Verstappen: Dutchman has biggest lead ever during summer break
- Sam Godber
Max Verstappen is having an incredibly dominant season in 2023. The Dutchman won 10 of the 12 races before the summer break and in the other two races Verstappen was 'only' second. Teammate Sergio Perez is having a tougher time in 2023 and partly because of this, Verstappen goes into the summer break with the biggest lead ever.
Verstappen is class apart
Verstappen is in a class of his own in Formula 1 this season. The Dutchman is yet to finish a (sprint) race outside the podium. The lead over Perez has now reached 125 points. Never before has a driver entered the summer break with such a large lead.
The second largest lead was in 2011. Here Sebastian Vettel went into the summer break with an 85-point gap in his favour over teammate Mark Webber. In 2022, Verstappen came close here with an 80-point lead over Charles Leclerc. However, only one year later, the two-time world champion managed to break this by quite a margin.
Even Hamilton not so dominant
Even Lewis Hamilton, of course, experienced huge dominance in Formula 1 in recent years. However, the Briton rarely started the second half of the season with a huge lead. Only in 2019 did the title race seem decided before the summer break, when Hamilton had a lead of no less than 62 points over teammate Valtteri Bottas. An important nuance is that there was no summer break in 2020, a year where Hamilton was extremely dominant, this was because the season did not start until July due to the coronavirus.