Red Bull on brink of rare F1 record

Red Bull is on the brink of becoming just the fifth team in F1 history to record 100 race wins.

Following the Miami Grand Prix, its tally stands at 97, marking out the Spanish Grand Prix as potentially the moment it reaches the century mark

In doing so, it will join Ferrari, McLaren, Williams, and Mercedes in one of the sport’s most exclusive clubs.

While in modern terms Mercedes is the most successful team, over the history of Formula 1 that honour belongs to Ferrari.

The Italian marque has a total of 243 race wins and began racing in the inaugural season of the world championship (though has missed more than a full season worth of races in the decades since).

Alain Prost recorded Ferrari’s 100th race win at the 1990 French Grand Prix, however, it wasn’t the 100th race win for a Ferrari.

An anomaly of his is that Giancarlo Baghetti won the 1961 French Grand Prix in a privately entered 156. Should we count that as a Ferrari win, the Scuderia’s 100th win would be the 1990 Mexican Grand Prix, though still courtesy of Prost.

Little more than two years after Prost helped Ferrari reach a century, McLaren did so too.

But while Ferrari took 456 races to get there, Gerhard Berger’s drive in the 1992 Australian Grand Prix came just 367 races after McLaren’s first win.

That was delivered by team founder Bruce McLaren at the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix, one of three wins for the fledgling operation that year.

Though there were years were McLaren was less successful, it was consistently a race winner through the 1970s and early 1980s, before Ron Dennis’ Project 4 management delivered a period of domination.

Today, the operation has 184 race wins, though its strike rate has slowed. For the next 84 wins it has taken, to date, 552 races.

Williams sits in a similar position.

Having enjoyed strong success once breaking through for victory with Clay Regazzoni at the 1979 British Grand Prix, its progress slowed since Jacques Villeneuve racked up the teams 100th victory in 1997 – ironically also at Silverstone.

That year was the Grove squad’s last championship success, with the team taking just 284 races between its first win and its 100th.

However, 478 races have been held since Villeneuve crossed the line in Britain 1997, with the team adding just 14 more wins to its tally in that time.

The most recent came courtesy of Pastor Maldonado at the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix – itself more than 200 grands prix ago.

By far the most rapid team to 100 wins, at least in grands prix competed terms, is Mercedes.

The German marque competed for two seasons during the 1950s, logging 12 wins courtesy of Juan Manuel Fangio and Sir Stirling Moss.

However, it withdrew from motorsport at the end of the 1955 season following the disaster at Le Mans, and only returned in 2010 when it bought out Brawn GP.

It was therefore absent, in a works team capacity, for 774 races over more than half a century.

However, it quickly made up for lost time.

Nico Rosberg won the team’s first race in close to 60 years when he crossed the line at the 2012 Chinese Grand Prix, while he and Lewis Hamilton added three more wins between them the following season.

From thereafter, the silver arrows dominated the sport, chalking up a total of 100 wins in 133 races from the start of 2014.

However, Mercedes’ 100th world championship race win was the 2019 Mexican Grand Prix, a victory which meant the marque completed in 206 races from its maiden win in 1955 to that point.

While slower than its incredible rate of success from 2014, it remains by far the most rapid accumulation to date – 78 races faster than Williams, or more than three full years of racing allowing for a 23-event calendar.

Red Bull will not break Mercedes’ record. However, it does have the opportunity to best Williams to become the second fastest team to 100 race wins.

Should it win the next three events, the Spanish Grand Prix would make for 281 events between the squad’s first and 100th wins – three fewer than Williams managed.

F1 race wins by constructor