Max Verstappen started his F1 career with Toro Rosso in the 2015 season. The Dutchman didn’t take long to make an impression and replaced Daniil Kvyat at Red Bull midway through the 2016 season. Having spent the remainder of his career with the Milton Keynes outfit, Verstappen has now equaled Michael Schumacher’s tally of race starts with the same team.
Schumacher won two championships with Benetton and decided to make the Ferrari switch for the 1996 season. The German driver rebuilt Ferrari to make them win five consecutive world championships and retired at the end of the 2006 F1 season. Having spent over a decade with the Maranello outfit, Schumacher had 180 starts for the Scuderia.
180 and counting…
Max Verstappen has levelled Michael Schumacher on the second-most Grand Prix starts for a single team. Only Lewis Hamilton has more than the pair #F1 pic.twitter.com/JnRxJa6swV
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 5, 2024
On the other hand, Verstappen has equaled Schumacher’s tally for starts with a single team. The Dutchman also sits on 180 starts with Red Bull and will surpass the German’s tally at the upcoming US GP.
Although it took Schumacher 11 years to track the tally of 180 race starts, Verstappen accomplished the same in under nine seasons. The Red Bull driver, however, had the advantage of the F1 calendar expanding every season with 24 races in 2024 —most races in an F1 season ever.
Regardless, Schumacher and Verstappen’s tally is still far away from the driver with the most starts with an F1 team i.e. Lewis Hamilton. The Briton joined Mercedes for the 2013 season after Schumacher retired from his second stint in F1. Hamilton continues to be with the Brackley outfit and will move to Ferrari after the end of the 2024 season.
Still, Hamilton has so far accumulated a total of 240 race starts with Mercedes. This number will only grow with six races still to go in the season. If Verstappen was to break this record, he’d need 60 more starts with Red Bull. Given that the current calendar is 24 races long, it will take the Dutchman about two and a half seasons, i.e. midway through 2027 to break this record.
