Why dominance is no bad thing for Formula 1

Red Bull's victory over Mercedes in Austria stopped the Silver Arrows breaking a famous record held by Honda. Stopping such a run may be a thing to celebrate, but achieving dominance is ultimately Formula 1's very nature

Jonathan Noble Jul 4, 2019, 10:20 AM

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Max Verstappen may not have realised it when he sprayed the champagne on the podium with Honda's technical director Toyoharu Tanabe, but his triumph in Austria last weekend was an important one for keeping the Japanese manufacturer's history books intact.

By stopping the Mercedes steamroller, Verstappen maintained a 21-year-old record that the German manufacturer has now failed to match on three occasions it has had the chance to do so.

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Author Jonathan Noble

Jonathan Noble is Motorsport.com’s Formula 1 editor. Having graduated from University of Sussex Jonathan worked for sports news agency Collings Sports reporting on F1, F3, touring cars and other sports, with articles appearing in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Reuters, Autosport and other publications. In 1999 he moved to Haymarket Publishing to become a senior editor at Autosport Special Projects, and one year later he became Autosport’s grand prix editor. In 2015 he moved to Motorsport Network, becoming the F1 editor for Motorsport.com. He is also a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers, and sits on the FIA Media Council.

Jonathan has won multiple awards for journalism - in 1991 he was the winner of the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Sir William Lyons’ Award for young journalists, in 2010 he was awarded the Outstanding Individual accolade for consumer journalism in the Haymarket wards, in 2011 he won Haymarket’s Scoop of the Year, and in 2018 he was awarded a prestigious Medaglia d’Oro at the Lorenzo Bandini Awards for his contribution to F1 journalism.