Red Bull's season of near-total control

The 2023 Formula 1 season delivered one of the most lopsided title outcomes in modern history, even if the story behind it was not entirely one-dimensional.

Max Verstappen secured his third consecutive World Championship, while Red Bull Racing dominated to an extraordinary degree, winning 21 of the 22 Grands Prix that actually took place. Yet behind that domination, the season still produced several distinct storylines: Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin started brilliantly, McLaren transformed its season after a weak opening phase, and Carlos Sainz gave Ferrari the only non-Red Bull victory of the year in Singapore.

Race Calendar

The 2023 calendar was originally scheduled to feature a record 23 rounds. However, the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix at Imola was cancelled because of severe flooding in the region, leaving 22 completed races.

The season also introduced the Las Vegas Grand Prix, which returned Formula 1 to the Las Vegas Strip with a spectacular Saturday-night event. In parallel, Sprint weekends expanded to six rounds, underlining Formula 1’s effort to add more standalone competitive sessions across the year.

Drivers and Constructors

The 2023 grid featured several important driver-market changes even though the three teams at the front kept stable line-ups.

• Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes all retained their 2022 pairings.
• Fernando Alonso left Alpine to join Aston Martin, replacing the retiring Sebastian Vettel.
• Pierre Gasly moved to Alpine, forming an all-French line-up with Esteban Ocon.
• Oscar Piastri made his Formula 1 debut with McLaren, replacing Daniel Ricciardo.
• Nyck de Vries took a full-time seat at AlphaTauri, while Logan Sargeant joined Williams as a rookie.
• Nico Hulkenberg returned to a full-time Formula 1 seat with Haas.

The season also featured one significant in-year change: Liam Lawson stepped in for the injured Daniel Ricciardo at AlphaTauri and scored points during his substitute run.

2023 Season Analysis

The broad shape of the season is immediately visible in the winners’ table.

Verstappen won 19 of the 22 Grands Prix that were held, while Perez added two more for Red Bull. The only race Red Bull did not win was Singapore, where Carlos Sainz delivered a controlled, strategically smart victory for Ferrari.

That result matters because it prevented a clean Red Bull sweep of every completed Grand Prix. Without Singapore, the season would have been historically perfect in terms of race wins.

There were still meaningful subplots behind Red Bull’s dominance:

• Aston Martin emerged as the early surprise of the year, with Alonso collecting podiums immediately after joining the team.
• McLaren made the biggest mid-season jump in competitiveness, turning a poor start into a run of regular podiums for Norris and Piastri.
• Piastri established himself as one of the standout rookies, taking a Sprint victory in Qatar and multiple Grand Prix podiums.
• Ferrari remained inconsistent, but Singapore showed that the team could still execute a high-pressure weekend perfectly.

Points, Podiums, Sprints and DNFs

The 2023 season is missing one major part of the full project treatment here: the custom chart-based analysis.

The raw season story is already clear from the official results:

• Verstappen wrapped up the Drivers’ Championship during the Qatar Sprint.
• Red Bull secured the Constructors’ Championship before the season finale and ended the year with 860 points.
• Sprint weekends expanded to six rounds in Azerbaijan, Austria, Belgium, Qatar, the United States, and Sao Paulo.
• Oscar Piastri took his first Formula 1 win in the Qatar Sprint, one of the standout moments of the season outside the main Grand Prix results.

For now, the chart sections are intentionally left out until the local analysis pipeline is ready.

Point Progression

Although the final margins were enormous, the season was not equally one-sided throughout every position in the standings.

At the front, Verstappen quickly separated himself from the field and converted Red Bull’s pace advantage into a title-winning campaign that never genuinely looked vulnerable after the opening phase of the year. His championship was mathematically secured in Qatar, before the main Grand Prix that weekend.

Behind him, the battle for second in the Drivers’ Championship remained active much longer. Perez ultimately held on to P2, but Hamilton, Alonso, Leclerc, Norris, and Sainz all had periods where they looked capable of reshaping the order behind Verstappen.

The Constructors’ picture was also more competitive than the Drivers’ title race suggested. Mercedes edged Ferrari by just three points for second, while McLaren’s recovery carried them to fourth ahead of Aston Martin. Further back, Williams beat AlphaTauri, Alfa Romeo, and Haas in a tight lower-midfield fight.

Conclusions and Final Standings

The 2023 season will be remembered first for the scale of Verstappen and Red Bull’s dominance.

Verstappen finished the year with 575 points and 19 Grand Prix victories, while Red Bull ended on 860 points and 21 wins from 22 completed races. Those numbers place the team’s campaign among the most overwhelming in Formula 1 history.

But the season also mattered for what happened behind them. Alonso revived Aston Martin’s competitiveness, McLaren found a route back to the front of the midfield, and Piastri’s rookie year suggested the grid had gained another future race winner. Sainz’s Singapore victory, meanwhile, stands as the single weekend that broke Red Bull’s almost complete control.

Note: Core season results and standings were compiled from official Formula 1 results pages.