Statistics must be clarified, but the chaotic sprint career of Saturday in the F1 Miami GP He left Vax Verstappen as 17th classified, outside the points but completing the race, something that had never happened since his second year in the category, in 2016, almost nine seasons ago.
Since it was 11th in the 2016 Belgium GP, in its ninth race with Red Bull Racing, Verstappen had always entered the points less when he left, so he had not seen the pictures flag for years, leaving vacuum. That also applies to Sprint races, where Verstappen has won more than half (11 of 20 disputed) and was at least fourth in all others except in Qatar 2024, where he saved a point being eighth.
And in all races since that Sunday of August 2016, the Dutchman was Top 10 except for his 25 abandonments for reliability or incident. It should be clarified that in Great Britain 2018 he was given as 15º, in Azerbaijan 2018 as 18º and in Bahrein 2019 as 19th for having completed almost all the laps, but in no case of those three saw the checkered flag.
Counting the Sprint races, Verstappen had 26 consecutive races by scoring, from Japan 2024, and keep their streaks Lewis Hamilton with 27 in a row scoring, Lando Norris with 31 and Oscar Piestri with 32, to one of the historical top 3 but still far from the 48 that Hamilton accumulated between Great Britain 2018 and Bahrein 2020.
Without counting the Sprint races, Verstappen keeps its streak of 26 races in a row scoring, as fifth best historical record in a statistic in which the record is also from Hamilton with the 48 followed mentioned in the previous paragraph.
As for this Saturday, when the run of races in a row scoring counting the sprints, everything was twisted to Verstappen when the stoppage of stops to mount smicks tires while the track was dried. There, Red Bull made an error that caused Verstappen and Antonelli to be touched, which on the one hand damaged the RB21 De Max, who made him a simple ‘defenseless victim’ against Hamilton (who advanced him to be third), and on the other caused a penalty that ended up leaving Verstappen 17º and last.
