With his victory at the Formula 1 race in Suzuka 2025, Max Verstappen has reached a special milestone: victories in ten consecutive seasons
Max Verstappen’s victory at the Japanese Grand Prix 2025 was remarkable in more ways than one. On the one hand, he probably didn’t win the race in the best car, but on the other hand, his success marked a special milestone: Verstappen has now won at least one Grand Prix for each of the last ten consecutive years.
A glance at the Formula 1 statistics shows that this is an extraordinary achievement: only three drivers before Verstappen managed to win at least one race every year over such a long period. We show this in our new photo gallery.
The first driver on this short list is Alain Prost. He won for the first time in Formula 1 for Renault in 1981 and later became an absolute superstar at McLaren, winning the drivers’ championship a total of three times by 1989.
His winning streak lasted until 1990, when he switched to Ferrari. But in 1991, Prost only managed podium finishes with Ferrari and didn’t win another race. He also got into trouble with the team after making critical comments about the car and was quickly fired.
After a year off, Prost returned to Formula 1 in 1993 and made a big splash: he won races again with Williams and also took the title at the end of the season. Prost then ended his Formula 1 career.
Michael Schumacher had already achieved his first Grand Prix victories: “Schumi” drove for Benetton in Spa-Francorchamps in 1992, crossing the finish line in first place for the first time, and added further victories in the following years. In 1994 and 1995, Schumacher won the World Cup title in each case.
He moved to Ferrari for the 1996 season and his winning streak continued: Schumacher won three races in his first year and continued in the following years. In 2001, Schumacher not only achieved his fourth world championship title, but also won for the tenth year in a row. He extended this statistic to 15 years by 2006.
Unlike Prost, Schumacher did not win a race during his Formula 1 comeback: in three years with Mercedes from 2010, “Schumi” only managed one podium finish.
Lewis Hamilton entered his name on the Formula 1 winners’ list in his debut season in 2007, and in the following years as a McLaren driver, he regularly added further entries. Even after his switch to Mercedes in 2013, it continued: In his first year with the star brand, Hamilton won the Hungarian Grand Prix.
From 2014, Mercedes dominated in Formula 1 and Hamilton amassed further successes. In 2016, his teammate Nico Rosberg snatched the world title from under his nose, but Hamilton managed victories for the tenth year in a row. In 2020, he won his seventh world championship, and 2021 marked his 15th consecutive year of Grand Prix victories.
The streak ended at the beginning of the new Formula 1 era in 2022, when Mercedes did not field a top car for the first time in years: Hamilton went two years without a win, but made a comeback in 2024. And after joining Ferrari for the 2025 season, he scored his first Ferrari victory in the sprint in China, only his second start for the team.
Verstappen, on the other hand, benefited from a collision between Hamilton and Rosberg in his first race for Red Bull in 2016, winning his debut with the new team. In the years that followed, he continued to rack up new successes until he was crowned Formula One world champion for the first time in 2021 after the controversial finale in Abu Dhabi.
Verstappen then dominated Formula 1 racing and added further world championship titles in 2022, 2023 and 2024. His Suzuka victory in 2025 finally saw him join the ranks of the special Formula 1 winning drivers. And who knows how long he will continue to write his success story: Verstappen is under contract with Red Bull until the end of 2028.
