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Max Verstappen is a Belgian and Dutch racing driver who has won Formula One World Championships to date.[1] He entered Formula One in 2015 with Scuderia Toro Rosso at the Australian Grand Prix, running in points scoring position when he was forced to retire due to an engine failure [2] to become the youngest driver ever to start a Grand Prix at the age of 17 years, 166 days[3]. However, at the subsequent race in Malaysia, Verstappen qualified sixth and finished the race in seventh place, scoring his first Formula One points aged 17 years, 180 days, breaking the record of the then-youngest driver to score World Championship points.[4] Midway through the following season, on 5 May 2016, Verstappen was promoted to the Red Bull Racing team, replacing Daniil Kvyat[5].
His first race with the Red Bull team at the Spanish Grand Prix was also his first Grand Prix win, becoming the youngest driver to win a Formual One Race. Qualifying fourth[6], Verstappen rose to second behind teammate Daniel Ricciardo on the opening lap after Mercedes teammates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg crashed out of the race.[7] Verstappen took the race lead as he was placed on a two-stop rather than the same three-stop strategy as Ricciardo, and he held off Ferrari's Kimi Räikkönen in the later stages of the race to take his first Formula One victory.[8] By doing so he displaced Sebastian Vettel as the youngest driver ever to win a Formula One Grand Prix at the age of 18 years and 228 days.[9]
Verstappen had to wait over a year for his second victory at the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix, with the third win following shortly at the 2017 Mexican Grand Prix
His first Grand Prix win came in the rain-affected 2008 Italian Grand Prix on 14 September; Vettel became the youngest driver to win a Formula One race at 21 years, 2 months and 11 days.[lower-alpha 1][11][12] He won four races in his first season with Red Bull in 2009 and finished runner-up to Jenson Button. Vettel took a further 34 victories with Red Bull in his four world championship winning seasons.[1] His 2013 season included 13 Grand Prix victories, which equalled seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher's record for most wins in a season.[lower-alpha 2][14] Vettel also took nine consecutive wins that year, from the Belgian Grand Prix to the Brazilian Grand Prix to equal two-time world champion Alberto Ascari's record from 1952 to 1953.[15][16] The 2014 season was the first since his debut year that Vettel did not achieve a race victory. He won three races in his first season with Ferrari in 2015 and none in 2016. This was followed by five victories each in the 2017 and 2018 seasons, one in 2019 and none in each of the 2020, 2021 and 2022 seasons.[1]
Vettel is currently ranked third in the all-time Formula One Grand Prix winners' list with 53 victories from 299 starts; the majority of his race victories (38) came with Red Bull; he also won 14 races with Ferrari and 1 for Toro Rosso.[17] His most successful circuit is the Marina Bay Street Circuit, the host track of the Singapore Grand Prix, where he won 5 times, with 8 podium finishes in 12 races.[18][19] Vettel's largest margin of victory in his career was at the 2013 Singapore Grand Prix, a race where he finished 32.627 seconds ahead of the second-placed Ferrari of Fernando Alonso,[20][21] and the smallest margin of victory was at the 2011 Spanish Grand Prix, where he beat McLaren's Lewis Hamilton by 0.630 seconds.[22][9]