Verstappen toasts Tost after 19th win completes dominant season

ABU DHABI: It was a measure of Max Verstappen's spare capacity in a season of record-breaking success that the first person he mentioned on Sunday (Nov 26) after winning the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was a retirement-bound F1 veteran team boss, Franz Tost.

After 18 years as the head of Red Bull's junior team, an operation that has been a conveyor belt of talent for the Milton Keynes-based outfit and others, Tost was on the Alpha Tauri pit wall for the final time.

"Thank you to everyone," said Verstappen on his in-lap after his record 19th win of the season and the 54th of his career. "And thank you to Franz Tost. He has had lots of us under his wings and it is his last race, so thank you to Franz."

Verstappen's progress from "Mad Max" in his early days of impetuous aggression through his determined arrival as a serial champion, following his controversial 2021 triumph at the Yes Marina Circuit, to his latest role as a record-breaking winning machine has been unstoppable.

On Sunday, he became the first driver to complete a season having led more than 1,000 laps, 1,003 of the 1,325 available, to deliver a percentage rate of 75.70 percent. A feat that surpassed the 60-year-record of two-time champion Jim Clark, who led 506 of 708 laps at a rate of 71.47 percent in 1963.

"It's been an incredible season," he said. "It was a bit emotional on the in-lap, the last time sitting in the car which has, of course, given me such a lot. And I am very proud to win here in the last race and I have to say a big thank you to everyone at Red Bull. It's been an incredible year, it will be hard to do something similar again.

"We know that, of course. You always want to do better but sometimes doing better is not only race wins and potentially winning