Max Verstappen had a mighty season in 2023 where he claimed 19 wins in 22 races. The Red Bull driver also won the championship with a staggering 575 points, and this was more than double of what P2 Sergio Perez gathered. Despite this, former F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve believes that the Red Bull driver wasn’t dominant enough.
Villeneuve, speaking about this said in an exclusive interview with PlanetF1, “Red Bull is not that far ahead at all. All the poles they took were by one-tenth or half-a-tenth. Very close! That is not dominance. It doesn’t resemble the Mercedes years, where they were half a second ahead of everyone.”
Admittedly, Villeneuve was referring to the days when Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton dominated the grid. For example, in 2020 out of 16 races, Lewis Hamilton took 10 pole positions and his teammate Valtteri Bottas took five. The only remaining pole went to Verstappen.
This is something that didn’t happen in 2023 where Verstappen took 12 poles in 22 races. Therefore, the dominant margin wasn’t too extreme for the former F1 driver. Nevertheless, he is also of the opinion that anyone can be Verstappen if they put enough effort.
How Red Bull were dominant, but not perfect in 2023?
Red Bull and Max Verstappen were absolutely dominant in the 2023 F1 season. However, they failed to extract the perfect season and take all the 22 race wins. Credits to Carlos Sainz of Ferrari, who won the 2023 Singapore GP to deny Red Bull the perfect title.
The race in the Marina Bay Circuit saw Sainz take the pole position ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell and teammate Charles Leclerc. The Spanish driver managed to hold on to his lead and keep Lando Norris and Mercedes duo of Hamilton and Russell behind to claim the only non-Red Bull win this year.
On the other hand, the Singapore GP started off on a bad note for Verstappen and Perez. Both Red Bull drivers went out in Q2 and started Sunday’s race in P11 and P13. In the end, Verstappen finished the race in P5, whereas Perez finished in P8.
This gave the grid a ray of hope about taking more race wins away from the Austrian team. However, the team from Maranello delivered clinical performances from there on and crushed all hope, brutally. As things stand, Red Bull and Max Verstappen are more likely to continue their dominance yet again in the 2024 F1 season.
