Verstappen set to break F1 record points total. How does he really compare to the greats?

He has had considerably more opportunity to collect points than most of his predecessors. During the inaugural years of the world championship in the 1950s, drivers competed in an average of seven races per season, with only eight points awarded to the winner. The dropped points system was also in operation; until 1990, drivers dropped their worst results from a certain number of races.

So when Juan Manuel Fangio won the 1954 championship with an overwhelming six wins from the eight races he entered — and a third- and fourth-place finish in the other two — his season total was 42 points out of a potential maximum of 45.

Verstappen has surpassed that total in two weekends, with up to 34 points on offer during a sprint round, and 22 race weekends in 2023. The maximum points any driver could have scored in 2023 was 594.

How does Verstappen’s dominance compare? 

We can offer a more realistic comparison by standardising the points totals, converting historic scores to the current system, which awards 25 points for a win, down to a single point for tenth.

Taking a selection of dominant seasons through F1 history, we have counted results from every round — stripping out the effect of the dropped points format. We have also discounted points awarded for fastest laps and sprint races.

But the increased number of races in the modern era still gives Verstappen an illusory lead — even though there are still five races remaining in the 2023 season.

F1’s highest scorers through history – total points

*up to Qatar Grand Prix

The disparity in scores doesn’t reflect the crushing superiority that other drivers demonstrated over their rivals and team-mates, long before Verstappen.

Alberto Ascari’s 1952 season remains the stuff of legend for him and Ferrari: he entered seven races and finished six, winning each one and recording the fastest lap in them all. With only the four best results counted, that gave him the maximum possible 36 point total at the end of the year. His Ferrari team-mates occupied second and third places in the table.

Fangio’s superlative 1954 in the new Mercedes W196 season came two years after. A decade on, Jim Clark and his Lotus 25 recorded another maximum score by winning seven of the ten races in the 1963 season. With the six best results counted, he couldn’t improve on his 54 point total (points were no longer being awarded for fastest lap, and nine points were awarded for victory). His closest challengers Graham Hill and Richie Ginther were 25 points behind.

Fast-forward to 1992 and Nigel Mansell ran amok in the Williams FW14B, with nine victories in the 16 races that season. He never finished a race lower than second but four retirements limited his score to 108 points, with all results now counted and 10 points awarded for victory.

Michael Schumacher and Ferrari arguably reached their peak in 2002, with 11 race wins from the 17 rounds that year, giving him 221 points. He was on the podium at every single Grand Prix.

His protege would follow a few years later; Sebastian Vettel taking 397 points from the 19 races in the 2013 season, with 13 victories, thanks to his mastery of Red Bull’s RB9.

To fully assess how these seasons compare with 2023, we need to look at the average score for each race entered. It’s here that the scores get really interesting.

F1’s highest scorers — points per race

 *up to Qatar GP

It shouldn’t be a great surprise that average race scores are so closely matched between seasons of near-perfection.

But making the playing field more equal only goes to show how impressive Verstappen’s performance has been this year (and how the competition hasn’t been able to match him).

Verstappen’s current race average — without sprint or fastest lap points — is 23.29 points per race for 2023, almost an entire point more than Michael Schumacher in the legendary 2002 season, with Fangio, Ascari, Vettel and Clark all within three points of the Red Bull driver’s average. Mansell’s failure to finish a quarter of the races in 1992 has dragged his score down.

It’s clear that if Verstappen can continue in this form, he looks certain to be the statistically most dominant driver in F1 history.

Is Verstappen the most dominant driver of all time?

A definitive verdict this isn’t: modern reliability gives drivers a huge advantage over earlier drivers for whom multiple retirements were inevitable. And when there were only eight races per season, those also took a disproportionate toll on their scoring average.

We also haven’t considered why each driver was so far ahead of the competition and to what extent it was down to superior machinery and exceptional talent. Nevertheless, the data vindicates what should be clear to racing fans: Verstappen is one of the greats.