CNN
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Red Bull driver Max Verstappen finished in first place in the Mexican Grand Prix to claim his record 14th win of the season on Sunday.
The 25-year-old’s 14th win of the season sees him overtake Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel for the most single-season race wins in Formula 1 history.
Earlier in October, Verstappen won his second career world championship at the Japanese Grand Prix, and last week he won the United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, which saw him share the record the number of race wins for the season.
With his victory in Mexico, Verstappen also broke the record for most points accumulated in a single season, previously set by Lewis Hamilton in 2019.
Records confirm Verstappen’s dominance this season. After an inauspicious start in Bahrain in March, he won race after race, comfortably overcoming an early challenge from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Speaking after Sunday’s race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City, Mexico, Verstappen looked forward to more success.
“An incredible result. It’s been an amazing year so far. We definitely appreciate it and we will try to do more,” said the Dutch rider.
Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton finished second, around 15 seconds behind the Dutchman, and Red Bull’s Sergio Perez came third.
Verstappen started on pole and escaped, while Hamilton behind him passed teammate George Russell.
The two teams started on different tires – Mercedes on the mediums hoping to challenge the Dutchman’s dominance with Red Bull on the softs – and for a while the cars were evenly matched.
Red Bull pitted their drivers first, opting for medium tires while Hamilton fitted hard tires to avoid having to return to the pits.
In the end, Mercedes’ strategy did not pay off as Hamilton could only watch Verstappen increase his lead, and team boss Toto Wolff later admitted on the radio that this was not the case. was “perhaps not the right tire choice”, according to the BBC.
But despite all of Verstappen and Red Bull’s achievements this year, there was a shadow cast over the team on Sunday after they were sanctioned for a budget cap breach last year.
Red Bull Racing (RBR) and the FIA have agreed to an accepted breach (ABA) agreement for the team’s breach of F1’s 2021 cost cap rules, the sport’s governing body announced on Friday.
RBR was found to have exceeded the cost cap by £432,652 ($501,409).
The penalty amounts to a fine of $7 million, a 10% reduction in cost limits for RBR’s aerodynamic testing for next year, and liability for costs incurred by the cost cap administration, which was responsible for investigating the violation.
In the FIA statement, the cost cap administration noted that RBR “acted cooperatively throughout the review process” and that “there is no accusation or evidence that RBR sought to any time to act in bad faith”.
“The most draconian part is the sporting penalty, which is a 10% reduction in our ability to use our wind tunnel and aerodynamic tools,” team boss Christian Horner told a news conference. , according to ESPN.
“That’s anywhere between 0.25 seconds and 0.5 seconds of lap time. It happens from now on, it has a direct effect on next year’s car and it will be in place for a period. of 12 months.
Two races remain on the F1 calendar for Verstappen to add to his record with the Brazilian Grand Prix scheduled for November 13 and the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on November 20.
