How Verstappen helped Red Bull reach F1's 100 club in Canada

On London's Oxford Street lies a small music venue, nestled inconspicuously between high-street staple shops. It’s almost barely visible, except from its little red sign. In the 1970s, it was there that punk music found its way out of the underground and into the mainstream, horrifying traditionalists and mobilising a youth movement united by the brash and loud counterculture it produced. This is the 100 Club, a venue that survives today in a post-punk world.

Formula 1’s own 100 club was, until the Canadian Grand Prix, occupied by a quartet of its own traditional icons. Ferrari, Williams, McLaren, and Mercedes were the sole occupiers of the exalted halls of those who have reached the milestone of 100 grand prix victories. Red Bull, once F1’s counterculture team owing to its bold and dynamic approach to racing, has now joined them thanks to frontman Max Verstappen’s one-man show at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Not that it was much of a surprise, given the run of form he currently finds himself in throughout a so-far dominant 2023.

Verstappen’s final 9.6-second margin over Fernando Alonso at the flag was hardly the largest of the year, and nor was it the most dominant victory he has enjoyed in his box-office seasons at the squad, but the Red Bull driver appeared largely serene at the wheel of the all-conquering RB19. This was something of a turnaround following the struggles that Red Bull faced in a chaotic trio of practice sessions, where one was held in wet conditions and another barely offering any track time as the circuit’s CCTV systems only offered a delayed output.

Only FP2 unveiled that the car was uncharacteristically skittish around kerbs and bumps around the Ile Notre-Dame circuit, and the damp FP3 offered little insight whether overnight changes to the formula had borne fruit. The wet/dry/wet qualifying session suggested that the car was slightly more stable than it had been, as Verstappen broke through the mizzling gloom to collect his 25th career pole.

Regardless, he was going into the race partially blind to the effect of the direction that Red Bull had taken after Friday night. The corner exit traction, which has generally been so impressive over 2023, appeared to be weakened during the extended second practice session. Thankfully for the team, the set-up tweaks seemed to cure those ills.

“To be honest, I didn't really know what to expect,” Verstappen admitted after the race. “We changed the car quite a bit compared to Friday, so I didn't really know how it would feel today. Luckily, it went in the right direction.”

Alonso's hopes of challenging Verstappen were hindered by losing out at the start to Hamilton

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

For those of whom reckon Red Bull’s dominance is beginning to feel prosaic, hopes were pinned on Alonso mounting a rocket-like start to challenge Verstappen into Turn 1 and claim the inside line for the next corner. But starting on the outside line on the grid tends to offer its disadvantages and, although the Spaniard’s departure from his grid box was equal to the cars around him, the Aston Martin was less fleet of foot compared to Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes. Rather than putting the squeeze on Verstappen, Alonso instead had to cede second to the seven-time champion and defend against George Russell behind him.

Although Hamilton suggested after qualifying that he hoped to put pressure on Alonso and Verstappen at the start, he was less optimistic about a successful Verstappen challenge. His hopes took a greater hit when he began to watch the Red Bull ahead, noting that its rear end on the exit of the lower-speed corners was unwavering. Thus, his focus was on keeping Alonso behind him, allowing Verstappen to start tacking on a few tenths here and there over the opening 10 laps.

During a brief virtual safety car period on the eighth lap, called as Logan Sargeant had parked up at Turn 6 with a suspected oil leak, Verstappen managed to juggle his deltas effectively and made a further 0.8s up on that lap over Hamilton, yielding a 3.6s lead by the end of the 10th lap. Even encountering a bird could not stop Verstappen from extending his lead over the next two laps, and Christian Horner later divulged that the avian remains had become lodged in the Red Bull’s brake ducts.

Verstappen felt that he had to lean on the hardest compound more than he wanted to simply to keep the temperature in the right window

But if Verstappen and Red Bull were hoping to hang it out on the medium tyre and extend the opening stint, their best-laid plans required a sprinkling of improvisation when Russell clouted the barrier on the exit of Turn 9 on the 12th lap; the shattered remains of his front wing and rear-right wheel rim required a safety car to allow the clean-up crew to work its magic.

The leading trio all used the opportunity to stop, collectively ditching their medium tyres for the hard compound. Hamilton emerged from his pitbox fractions ahead of Alonso, who hoped to make the most of it with a theatrical twist of his steering wheel. Cue the cameras panning to Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, who mocked the Aston Martin driver’s apparent simulation from his usual seat in the garage. The stewards felt there was no foul play and chose not to award an unsafe release penalty to the Briton.

Verstappen hit the gas ahead of the lap 17 restart on the exit of the chicane and left the cars behind him for dead, leaving Hamilton and Alonso to deal with the medium-shod Ferraris; both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz had resisted the urge to stop under the safety car in a bid to break out of the DRS train that had stymied their progress among the opening phases of the race. Their softer tyres fired up a little quicker at the start, but Hamilton and Alonso were soon able to pull clear and resume their tantalising scrap for second.

Two laps on from the restart, Verstappen was already 1.6s up on Hamilton, but remained wholly unconvinced by the hard tyre. That Hamilton was not able to close in on him placated his concerns slightly, particularly at the start of the stint, but Verstappen felt that he had to lean on the hardest compound more than he wanted to simply to keep the temperature in the right window.

Verstappen was unhappy with his car on the harder tyres, but it didn't impact his margin

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“I think it was quite tough today to keep the tyres in the right window,” he mused after the race. “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.”

Hamilton was also having a slightly less than felicitous time on the hard compound relative to Alonso, whose dander was up after their close-quarters duel in the pitlane. Crucially, he’d remained in DRS range of his former McLaren team-mate and slowly began to draw nearer, eventually lunging past on lap 22 on the back straight and reclaiming second place by the chicane.

Despite Verstappen’s contention that the hard tyres were offering no grip, he continued to break-build despite the car behind him having changed. Eventually, the tyre began to come to him, and his complaints subsided after race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase had to put his finger to his lips over the radio. Alonso was now over five seconds behind as the race reached its midpoint, and the Aston Martin’s growing deficit came as its lead driver was asked to start lifting and coasting.

Speculation was that Alonso was allegedly carrying a brake cooling issue, but Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack revealed that worries over the car’s fuel load prompted the team to start saving, lest it risk running out towards the end of the race. Although he stopped short of specifying what the problem within the fuel system was, the call to lift and coast proved to be unnecessary.

“They didn't tell me [what it was],” Alonso explained after the race. “Maybe it was not to make me worry too much. But I don't know. I felt the car was OK. But I was just following the instructions. So yeah, hopefully, that means that we have a little bit more pace.”

“We were not sure, so as a precaution we said the best thing is to save some fuel and to do lift and coast,” explained Krack. “We thought we had a problem which did not materialise in the end. How much did it cost us? It's difficult to judge. A few tenths, probably, one or two, maybe. It was a precautionary thing. But you can choose between not finishing or arriving with a bit more [fuel], so we wanted to be safe.”

That didn’t stop Alonso from delivering what he reckoned were “70 qualifying laps” over the course of the race, but managing the then-unspecified problem likely took quite a discernible sting out of his tail. The gap between Verstappen and Alonso had grown to 5.4s but, by the midway point of the race, it started to shrink ever so slightly in anticipation of a second round of pitstops.

Alonso gave his all once clear of Hamilton, but was held back by the call to save fuel

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Although Hamilton was not out of the reckoning at this point, he had dropped to almost five seconds behind Alonso and was commanded to use up the last of his hard-compound Pirellis in anticipation of a final stop at the end of lap 40. In a bid to gain a partial undercut and close back in on Alonso, Hamilton stopped a lap sooner than the Aston Martin and collected a set of mediums for the final 30 laps of the race. Alonso only had the hard tyre left and had to contend with the slower rubber to keep Hamilton at bay for the last phase.

“That is something that you need to decide before qualifying, the tyre allocation for qualifying and the race,” he recounted. “Obviously with a very limited practice that we did on Friday, it was just a guess [to hold back two hard sets]. I'm happy with the decision; for us, the hard was not a bad tyre at all, and we were able to stand the stints.”

Verstappen collected his own set of fresh mediums on lap 42 for the final part, relieved to be in possession of a compound that required a little less work to coax into its optimal working range. Alonso had closed the gap down to 4.5s after both had completed their second stops and worked it down to just below four seconds by the 47th tour, but a mistake at Turn 8 led to him taking to the run-off and shipping two seconds to the cars around him.

Verstappen added another second to his gap on Alonso to sit on the cusp of a 10-second lead with two laps to go, and brought the car home for his 41st grand prix victory to match Ayrton Senna’s tally of F1 wins

He was continuing to run to a lift-and-coast approach, much to his chagrin, and asked his race engineer Chris Cronin to let him know when he’d done enough. “I want to win the race,” he finished, hoping that the Aston Martin engineers could find an alternative solution to managing his race.

But those hopes of winning appeared to fade over the ensuing laps, as Verstappen continued to find time on the medium tyres. The difference was only a few tenths per lap, but it was enough to slowly grow an advantage and leave Alonso having to rethink his priorities in the remainder of the race.

With 10 laps remaining the gap between the front pair was 8.3s, while Hamilton had cut the arrears to just 1.4s having been erroneously told that Alonso was nursing a brake issue. This was perhaps a call to arms to drink up more of the medium tyres’ life, with a view to breaking into DRS range, but this instead prompted Alonso to pick up the pace, dropping into the 1m15s to match and surpass Hamilton’s efforts over the last few laps.

Despite a small moment of over-eagerness at Turn 8, where he braked a fraction too deep and bunny-hopped over the kerb, Verstappen knew how to close out the race and execute his finishing move. Gathering his final ounces of performance, Verstappen added another second to his gap on Alonso to sit on the cusp of a 10-second lead with two laps to go, and brought the car home for his 41st grand prix victory to match Ayrton Senna’s tally of F1 wins.

Victory for Verstappen equalled Ayrton Senna's tally of 41

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“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 I could win 41 grands prix," Verstappen explained after. “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.”

Alonso successfully defended his second place, finding enough to build a 4.6s buffer by the chequered flag over Hamilton. The 2005 and 2006 world champion admitted that he thought he’d lost it at the start, but the AMR23’s hard-tyre pace rather came in handy when it came to reversing the damage. While the Hamilton of old might have been aggrieved to have conceded a place, the struggles that Mercedes has faced over the past two seasons simply left him glad to enjoy a genuine battle with his former arch-nemesis.

Behind the triumvirate of champions at the front, the Ferrari duo rescued its abject Saturday with its strategy, praise that has admittedly come at a premium in recent years. The long medium stint put it in a position to successfully enact a one-stop, made possible as tyre degradation in Montreal was much reduced overall. Leclerc finished ahead of Sainz, but the latter helped drive the strategic calls and encouraged the Ferrari pitwall to extend the opening stint having felt that the overall pace was showing minimal drop-off.

By the end both drivers’ pace was not dissimilar to that of the leaders’ and, although Sainz was often sitting within three seconds of Leclerc ahead, the pair agreed with the team not to fight between themselves in order to preserve a strong result. On a different day, had qualifying not compromised their plans, the two could well have been in the mix for an outside podium shot; Hamilton and Alonso both admitted that the Scuderia worried them at select times during the race.

Even on a circuit that Red Bull felt that it was weaker at, there was nothing stopping Verstappen from clinching the Milton Keynes squad’s century of wins. Amid its phases of domination in the early 2010s with Sebastian Vettel at the wheel, reaching such an illustrious landmark seemed to be only a matter of time; the team’s recovery from a series of leaner years to once again stand upon the highest stratum of F1 competition finally offered the chance to hit that milestone. For the unsentimental Verstappen, however, it’s merely a tick-box.

“It is a great achievement for the team. This was the first opportunity to do so, and I'm happy that that's done with a hundred. But I hope we win more, so the new target is 200.”

Only Ferrari has ever achieved that tally, which it owes to its longevity in the championship. Red Bull has finally played at the 100 Club, and the rest of the season will offer an extended encore towards Verstappen’s seemingly irrepressible march to the title. But this is no longer a small punk outfit hell-bent on being a disruptor; Red Bull these days is akin to a stadium rock outfit at the absolute peak of its powers, drawing sell-out crowds in the world's biggest arenas. F1’s equivalent of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a much more befitting audience for its path to the next 100 wins, as it strives to continue enjoying its current success.

Having maintained its unbeaten record in 2023, Red Bull is going to take some stopping

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images