Marvel at Verstappen's talent, but his F1 consistency isn't that impressive — MPH

Max Verstappen has enjoyed one of the most dominant seasons in the sport’s history, despite a car that was often not the fastest in the season’s first half. This weekend in Brazil Verstappen could extend his existing all-time record of the most victories in a season to 15.

There is no question that he has delivered a stunning level of personal performance, regardless of how quick his car has been, and how good his team has been on race day. His onslaught has been pummelling, relentless and worthy of comparison with any of the greats in the sport’s history. His performance at Spa was perhaps the finest of his career to date. From 14th on the grid into the lead and pulling away with two-thirds of the race still to go in a car with a neutral balance through the fast corners that was buying him chunks of lap time but which for most others – his team mate Sergio Perez included – would have been undriveable.

So don’t take the following as criticism of him. But whenever anyone points to the ‘amazing consistency’ of his lap times, that doesn’t actually mean as much as it used to in the sprint era. When you are driving to your brake or tyre temperatures, lifting and coasting to get either those targets or your fuel usage on schedule, by their standards it is painting by numbers. They are nowhere near their own personal limits when doing this, so it’s relatively easy to achieve ‘consistency’.

1m 22s and repeat 😮

Incredible lap time consistency from @Max33Verstappen 💪#MexicoGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/mp3pKn9Kpj

— Formula 1 (@F1) November 4, 2022

Michael Schumacher and Renault-title-era Fernando Alonso each carved their reputations from how they could drive on the limit for lap after lap and just grind the opposition into the ground, inflicting damage on them every single lap.

That isn’t actually what’s going on in this era when we see this ‘amazing consistency’. Let’s take Mexico stint 1 as a case study.

Verstappen, in the lead on soft tyres and being followed by Lewis Hamilton on mediums, doesn’t have the pace advantage to be able to pull away without, in this case, overheating his brakes. The task then is to edge out enough of a gap that he is a) out of DRS range and b) out of undercut range as the pitstop window opens a few laps later. He knows Hamilton is facing the exact same challenge with the brakes, so knows the Mercedes cannot be driven flat-out either. In fact, in Verstappen’s dirty air, Hamilton will likely have to be conserving his brakes even more.

We know the potential ultimate pace of the cars from qualifying. In the race, we have to factor in the effect of the fuel weight, the tyre degradation and a power unit which – unlike during a lap of  qualifying – cannot have full electrical deploy on demand, as there must be a balance between harvest and deploy to keep the battery charged.

If we factor all those in, we can see what lap time the car on ‘x’ fuel load and with ‘y’ tyre age should be capable of. Comparing that to the actual lap will be a measure of how much the driver is ‘managing’, ie how much he is having to back off to conserve – in the case of Mexico – his brakes. But if it’s not brakes it’s fuel and if it’s not fuel it’s tyres. The theoretical fastest way to run the race is always some combination of managing so as to get the most efficient stint lengths. It never involves running flat-out.