Max Verstappen & Co.’s Ability to Match Ayrton Senna & McLaren’s Unprecedented F1 Record Comes Into Doubt

The 2022 F1 season was nothing short of overwhelming for Red Bull and Max Verstappen. After all, you don’t often see a team win 17 and a driver 15 races in a season, do you? In fact, you’ve never seen that happen before 2022. That run continued in 2023 as we saw Verstappen practically run away with another dominant victory. That begs the question of whether team Red Bull can achieve the impossible – win every race in the 2023 season. The only team ever to come close to doing it was McLaren, courtesy of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in 1988. However, they too fell short by one race. Some experts doubt whether Red Bull has it in them to reach there.

McLaren, in 1988, produced a beast of a car in MP4/4. The 1,200 horsepower, turbocharged engine, coupled with a manual gearbox made for a car befitting Senna and Prost’s capabilities behind the wheel. Lewis Hamilton once got to ride that car and found out exactly why that machine won 14 races out of 15 in 1988.

Speaking on ESPN F1’s Unlapped podcast, Laurence Edmondson said, “I think they can win every race, judging by the pace of that car and how much extra it seemed to have in hand [in Bahrain]. They can do that but whether they will do that is another thing. Because anybody who’s watched Formula 1 over years and years knows that to get the perfect season is so difficult.”

“And the closest any team had come before in 1988 when McLaren won 15 off 16 races with Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna doing the winning that year. But to do all 23 (number of races this year) I think it’s probably going to be too much.”

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Edmondson might have his doubts. But having witnessed the action on track himself, George Russell believes Red Bull could actually win every race.

George Russell throws in the towel after Max Verstappen & Co’s Bahrain exploits

Verstappen led from the first lap. He refused to give the rivals even a sniff of victory throughout the first race of the season. His partner, Sergio Perez, however, did not have the best start, throwing away the P2 initially. However, showcasing how dominant the RB19 is, he quickly recovered and retook the runner-up position from Charles Leclerc. Witnessing it all in front of him has got Russell sweating, and it seems like he has given up already.

Speaking post-race, as quoted by Motorsport Turkiye, he said, “I think they will win every race. Given their performance, I don’t think anyone will challenge them. This weekend their speed looks weaker than they did in testing, which was a little weird. But right now, things are easy and they can do whatever they want.” [Translated using Google]

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Mercedes, on the other hand, now has the task of fighting not just Ferrari for the number 2 spot, but also Aston Martin. The Lawrence Stroll-owned team showed just how much they improved since last year. They clinched P3 courtesy of Fernando Alonso in Sakhir.