Verstappen has now retired more often than Hamilton in his entire career
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Max Verstappen is only 23 years old, but he already has a lot of records to his name in Formula 1. He is for example the youngest driver ever to score points, the youngest race winner and after last weekend also the first driver to win a sprint race. However, Verstappen has a first that he will be less happy about. He has already retired more times in his short career than Lewis Hamilton has in his entire career.
The biggest unlucky driver
The German Autobild makes up the balance for "bad luck Verstappen." The Dutchman has crashed out 28 times in his career so far and that is more often than Hamilton in his Formula 1 career. The Briton crashed out 26 times. The German magazine writes: "Max Verstappen has the fastest car, he makes fewer mistakes than Lewis Hamilton and could therefore win the world title. If bad luck wasn't on his heels. The Dutchman is the unluckiest driver in Formula 1 - and not just since his failure at Silverstone."
Figures don't lie
The magazine then runs a clear calculation on it. Hamilton's adventure in Formula 1 began in 2007, Verstappen's in 2015. The current world champion drove more than twice as many races than the Dutchman: 276 versus 128. In terms of percentage, this means that Hamilton only managed to not get to the chequered flag in 9.42% of his races, while the percentage for Verstappen is significantly higher: 21.71%.
With that score, Verstappen has the highest failure rate of the entire grid at the moment. Kimi Raikkonen may have had more failures on paper (71 times), but the Finn has already completed 340 races. The number of laps completed by the two teams this year also shows how impressive it is that Verstappen is still on top of the championship standings. Verstappen drove 569 laps compared to Lewis' 627.