Verstappen: “Incredible” to match Senna’s tally of 41 F1 victories

Senna collected his victories between 1985 and 1993 prior to his death in 1994. For years, the Brazilian’s record was dwarfed by only Alain Prost’s total of 51 wins but has since been surpassed by Michael Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel, and Lewis Hamilton.

Verstappen has now reached that level with his win in Montreal, his sixth of the season, and also helped Red Bull reach the milestone of 100 F1 victories.

Speaking about reaching those respective win counts, Verstappen explained that it would have been far beyond his imagination before the start of his F1 career, and added that he now wants to help Red Bull reach the next step of 200 victories.

“I hate to compare different generations but, from my side, the only thing I can say is that when I was a little kid driving in go-karts, I was dreaming about being a Formula 1 driver, and I would’ve never imagined to win 41 grands prix,” Verstappen said.

“So, of course, to tie with Ayrton is something incredible. I’m proud of that, but of course, I hope it’s not stopping here. I hope that we can keep on winning more races.

“I have won 41 of [Red Bull’s 100 wins], so we’ll talk about maybe a new contract because of that!

“No honestly, it’s a great achievement for the team. You know, we knew that this was the first opportunity to do so, and I’m happy that’s done with a hundred.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, 1st position, celebrates with his team on arrival in Parc Ferme

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“But again, I hope we win more than a hundred – so the new target’s 200!”

Verstappen explained that Red Bull took a long road to ensure it was in a position to chalk up its 100th win, having made a flurry of changes after Friday practice to inhibit some of the issues it faced over bumps and kerbs.

He added that it remained difficult to keep the tyres in the right window, particularly with the hard rubber, and probably suited the cars that were a bit harder on their tyres given the lower degradation characteristics of the Montreal race.

“We changed the car on quite a bit compared to Friday, so I didn’t really know how it would feel today, but luckily it went in the right direction.

“I think it was quite tough today to keep the tyres in the right window. They were always running quite cold, so we had to push actually quite hard on the tyre.

“With low grip it was not the easiest and most straightforward. But everything went well. Just the hard tyre probably was a bit of a limitation because of the harder compound, so it was even harder to keep the tyre temps.

“I think we know that our car normally is very good on when it’s high deg compared to other cars. Today probably you would’ve needed a car which is a bit harder on the tyre to keep the temperatures in.

“It’s probably not been our best race today. But still to win by nine seconds I think shows that we have a great car. “