Before the unusually-named Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia began, Max Verstappen made it clear he wanted to avoid ending the season without a victory.
He put that right on Sunday, ensuring he claimed a victory for the 11th season in a row. He only failed to win a grand prix in his debut season at Toro Rosso (now Racing Bulls) in 2015.But Verstappen needs to keep winning every year until 2030 to equal Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton’s joint record of 15 consecutive winning seasons (from 1992 to 2006 and 2007 to 2021 respectively).
Verstappen claimed the first victory for car number three since his former team mate Daniel Ricciardo won the Italian Grand Prix for McLaren five years ago. Two other drivers on the grid today have won with that number: Fernando Alonso twice in 2013 at Ferrari and Hamilton three times for McLaren in 2011, both in seasons before the FIA introduced ‘career numbers’.
This was the 72nd victory of Verstappen’s career. It came in Malaysia’s first grand prix in nine years, which Verstappen also won, taking the second win of his career at that point.
But there were a few noteworthy differences. Those latter cases were all events held in addition to rounds which took place in those countries, while F1 is not racing in Bahrain at all this year as it was considered too unsafe due to the proximity to the conflict in Iran. Precisely because of that, the distance between the event and the country it was named after was much greater than those earlier cases, being some 6,000 kilometres.
So instead of the Bahrain International Circuit holding its 23rd race, the Sepang International Circuit held its 20th. In theory Bahrain will hold the first round on the 2027 F1 calendar, but watch this space.
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Verstappen’s success vindicated Red Bull’s decision to build their own power unit, in conjunction with Ford. The latter last contributed to a grand prix victory in 2003, when Giancarlo Fisichella won the Brazilian Grand Prix for Jordan (now Aston Martin) powered by a Ford-Cosworth RS1.
However a substantial amount of credit must also go to Red Bull, who had already committed to building their own power units before teaming up with Ford. Although they previously ran their Honda-designed units successfully, they deserve to be regarded as a new engine constructor in their own right, and those don’t appear very often.
If we accept this was the first victory for a new engine built by a new constructor, when was the last time this happened? Red Bull’s other wins since 2022 have been credited to ‘Red Bull Powertrains’ and Honda RBPT but all involved the same Honda-derived power units.
Other new names which appeared on the winners lists in previous years were often due to branding exercises. Red Bull previously won races with Renault engines badged as TAG Heuer. Engines produced by Honda and Porsche won races labelled as Mugen-Honda and TAG-Porsche respectively.
Using a strict definition, avoiding all rebranded engines and those related to previous designs by constructors who had already won races, Red Bull-Ford’s win is the first for a new F1 engine constructor since BMW in 1982. That win came courtesy of Brabham’s Nelson Piquet in the Canadian Grand Prix. In an extremely unusual result, his team mate Riccardo Patrese finished that race in second place powered by a different engine: his Brabham was powered by Ford.
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The others manufactures on the grid today are either yet to win (Audi) or scored their first wins long ago: Ferrari in 1951, Mercedes in 1954 and Honda in 1965.
A week ago, George Russell grabbed the eighth win of his career, in Baku. Verstappen served notice of Red Bull’s potential there, chasing his rival across the line, the pair separated by just 0.196 seconds. This was the closest finish to a grand prix since the rigged conclusion to the 2002 United States Grand Prix, where Schumacher attempted to contrive a ‘dead heat’ with team mate Barrichello, but instead was beaten to the line by 0.011s.
Finally, Fernando Alonso took advantage of the conditions in Sepang to claim Aston Martin’s best finish of the season with eighth place. Those four points leave his team just five shy of Williams.
Over to you
Have you spotted any other interesting stats and facts from the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia or Azerbaijan Grand Prix? Share them in the comments.