Verstappen grabbed most podiums, but who grabbed highest percentage?

With his first world title in 2021, Max Verstappen shot up vertically in many a record list. The F1 winter break is an ideal time to dive into the statistics and see what the number of podiums the Dutchman achieved in 2021 actually says.

Verstappen at the top of the list

No less than eighteen times Verstappen was on the podium in 2021. That is a record in seventy years of F1. The Dutchman is thus beating his rival Lewis Hamilton, but also the living legend Michael Schumacher. Schumacher managed to get on the podium seventeen times in one season. Hamilton managed to do so no less than five times and Sebastian Vettel also managed to do it once.

An important note to this statistics list is the number of races that were driven in the seasons in which these drivers achieved their podiums. For example, Max did get eighteen podiums in one season, but before 2020, there was never a year where there were as many as 22 races. In 2020, Hamilton grabbed seventeen podiums, so Verstappen did trump the Briton's last year.

Schumacher record one hundred percent

Even with fewer races, Hamilton was good for seventeen F1 podiums, no less than five times. That makes the Brit a great driver, but he cannot match Schumacher's record for the time being. The seventeen podiums that the German achieved in 2002 was a hundred percent score. In that season, there were 'only' seventeen races. Percentage-wise, Schumacher is thus the absolute king.

With this new list, we see Schumacher back on top, followed by Jim Clark who grabbed nine podiums in the ten-race season of 1963. Hamilton and Vettel share the third spot. Verstappen is now only in eleventh place, with 81.82 percent of the races a podium. With today's long seasons, who can ever match Schumacher's 100 percent score?