Verstappen overcomes past DNF's after win in Japan

Max Verstappen has become champion twice in a row with his victory in Japan. The win in Japan also gave him his 32nd victory in Formula 1 and also ensures that he now has more race wins than DNFs.

Verstappen leaves stoppages behind

It is a good time to look back at the DNF's by the Red Bull Racing driver and how the Dutchman climbed over these setbacks. In Verstappen's early years in F1, he was frequently plagued by DNF's. The Renault engines he drove with until 2018 at both Toro Rosso and Red Bull often let him down. The bulk of his total number of 31 stoppages until then have to do with engine problems. In his first F1 year, the Dutchman had five stoppages. In 2016, things seemed to be going well for a while with only three DNFs in the season, but 2017 was his absolute low. No fewer than seven times the Dutchman failed to finish that year.

Verstappen continued to experience a relatively high number of crashes in the following years. Ironically, the heavy crash with Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone 2021 was his 28th failure, bringing him to the same number of DNF's as the Brit currently has behind his name. Currently, Verstappen already has 31 DNF's out of 162 GP appearances. By comparison; Hamilton has 28 out of 306 participations. Fortunately, Verstappen seems to be putting this grim statistic behind him with two strong season in which he took many wins and became champion. With his win in Japan, Verstappen has more F1 wins behind his name than DNFs, so in Verstappen's case, that means a lot.