Brazil GP Takeaways: Max secures prestigious record, Mercedes' latest collapse

Following each race weekend this year, theScore’s editors offer their takeaways. We continue the 2023 schedule with the Brazil GP.

1 of the sport’s oldest, most impressive records falls

Max Verstappen has rewritten the record books so many times that, at this point, it’s worth asking how the pen hasn’t run out of ink yet. In Brazil, he squeezed one more blob of ink to pen his name on a feat that undisputedly marked his 2023 campaign as the best in Formula 1’s long history.

With win No. 17 of the season at Interlagos, the reigning Dutch world champion is guaranteed to win no fewer than 77.2% of all races this year, which beats a 70-year record held by legendary driver Alberto Ascari for the highest win percentage in a season.

It’s important to consider that as the Formula 1 calendar grows larger, volume records like most wins or most podiums, which Verstappen also broke Sunday by securing his 19th appearance on the top three steps, also have an increased chance to fall. But that’s exactly what makes the toppling of Ascari’s feat so significant.

Ascari’s accomplishment dates back to 1952 when Formula 1 was holding just eight races a year. The Italian took home wins in six of those eight, giving him a win rate of 75%. As Formula 1’s schedule expanded with more races being held in more locations, the odds of Ascari being dethroned decreased.

Or at least it should have.

Winning over 75% of races in a calendar that’s grown from 16 stops in 2003 to 22 in 2023, Verstappen has defied history. It’s something Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel, and Alain Prost – all greats who operated great machinery – never accomplished.

As he’s proven again and again, Verstappen in the cockpit of Red Bull’s top fighter, the RB19, is operating at a level never seen before.

The 26-year-old has already won 85% of all races this season by crossing the checkered flag first in 17 of 20. He could extend his record if he closes out the year with wins in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi.

At this point, there’s no reason to think anything could stop him from doing just that. – Daniel Valente

Mercedes’ magnified miseries

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff didn’t mince his words after the Brazil GP, saying the “inexcusable” car didn’t deserve to win.

“I can only feel for (Hamilton and George Russell) driving such a miserable thing,” he told Sky Sports postrace, adding, “That car almost drove like it was on three wheels, not four.”

The weekend didn’t start out a complete disaster. Hamilton and Russell qualified P5 and P8, respectively, for Sunday’s grid, and both finished with points in Saturday’s sprint. After Sunday’s race was red-flagged on Lap 3 over a collision between Alex Albon and Kevin Magnussen, Hamilton restarted the race P3 and Russell P6. It was business as usual for the Silver Arrows – until it wasn’t.

After coming in for a pit stop, Hamilton noted on the team radio that he was having problems with his tires. Regardless of the compounds used through the balance of the race, both drivers fell further down the points. Russell was ultimately forced to retire with a power unit issue on Lap 59, while Hamilton finished eighth.

“The car is really unpredictable in the sense of one weekend and one session it feels good and then not,” Hamilton said postrace. A dejected Russell added that this weekend was Mercedes’ “worst race” of the season.

While it seems like every team except Red Bull has been vocal about their poor cars this past year, Mercedes has arguably been the loudest. Wolff has been adamant since the Bahrain GP – the first race on the 2023 schedule – that the upgrades made to Mercedes’ W14 need to be “more radical” in order to close the gap to Verstappen.

Needless to say, the aforementioned upgrades haven’t gone to plan.

It would be easy to blame the weekend’s results on the time crunch of this weekend’s sprint, but it’s not that simple. While sprints cut down on time to prep cars for Sunday’s race, all teams have the same allocated amount of time in their garages. Although Mercedes hasn’t podiumed this year during sprint weekends, not being able to prepare on a condensed timeline isn’t an excuse for poor performances.

This doesn’t look like the confident, adaptable team that won its sixth straight drivers’ world championship just three years ago. Brazil merely amplified Mercedes’ need to start the car from scratch next year and figure out the root of this year’s problems. Less than three months ago, Wolff went on the record to say that Mercedes had the “strongest pairing on the grid” and were “building blocks for our future success.”

With Hamilton, one of the greatest to ever drive, still behind Mercedes’ wheel for another two seasons and Russell a rising star, both drivers have shown that it’s not a talent issue as to why the team’s not up to snuff. – Sarah Wallace

Aston hits reset button, looks refreshed

Adversity met its match.

After starting the season with six podiums through the first eight races, 42-year-old Fernando Alonso was held out of the top three in 10 of the next 11 races. Heralded as an ageless two-time champ, poised to potentially be Verstappen’s biggest threat for the drivers’ title, Alonso and Aston Martin instead floundered, unable to adapt to any of the misfortune they faced.

Cut to a final-lap battle – with a Red Bull no less – in Interlagos this Sunday, and the two-time champion somehow came out ahead by just barely more than five one-hundredths of a second; a third-place finish coming on the heels of back-to-back retirements in Austin and Mexico City. Given how long it’s been since we’ve seen this version of Alonso and Aston, it’s a mystifying result. In fact, even the Spaniard himself had his doubts moments from the checkered flag.

“For me, it was like 30 laps that I had the pressure from Checo (Perez),” Alonso said after the race. “But when he passed me two laps to the end, I thought, ‘Okay, this is gone, the podium is not possible anymore.’ But he braked a little bit late into (Turn) 1, and I said, ‘Okay, I go for it into (Turn) 4.'”

It seems to come down to simply hitting the reset button on some attempted upgrades made recently and reverting back to older specifications. That doesn’t sound like a promising recipe for future success, but, as they say, don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Even Lance Stroll, who’s been effectively missing in action since a sixth-place finish in Spain, was able to have his second-best result of the year, crossing the line fifth in Brazil, faster than any car that wasn’t a Red Bull, his teammate, or Lando Norris in the McLaren. And perhaps most astounding is that he downplayed the result a bit and credited the car.

“We had a really quick car today and back to where we were at the beginning of the year,” the Canadian noted. “A bad start – I didn’t get off the line well, but after that, the car felt good, good pace, so I think it was a really strong weekend.”

None of this undoes the fact that Aston has fallen to the back of the midfield in the constructors’ championship race.

Midfield teams

With two races remaining, the 21-point gulf to McLaren feels close but ultimately insurmountable with how both Norris and Oscar Piastri have performed of late. Aston seems more likely to outperform Mercedes and Ferrari down the stretch, but those gaps are over 100 points and impossible to make up. And it stings to think that, if those botched upgrades were never implemented, perhaps Aston is much more in the thick of things.

Like it or not, the focus is on next year. And the fact that the team has seemingly found a configuration that works heading into the season’s penultimate race in Las Vegas is a huge boon. Following the last two results, it seemed like Aston Martin could be a team in flux. One race later, and we’re back to believing Aston could and should be a force in the midfield – and perhaps wishfully even higher – in 2024. – Michael Bradburn