Max Verstappen vs. the Kabbalah: the roster of his "new" number 3 in F1

Max Verstappen is starting again with 3. The Dutch champion announced a number change that is in some ways “historic” as he had always taken to the track with 33 at the beginning of his career with both Toro Rosso and Red Bull. From 2022 to the present, as reigning world champion, he had instead always opted for the glorious 1 (unlike, for example, Lewis Hamilton, who even as a rainbow winner wanted to keep the 44). Yet the Kabbalah and the Formula 1 statistics books do not seem to reward the decision of ‘SuperMax’. At least in a window of time spanning the&#8217last fifty years (and more) of racing.

Marco Enzo Venturini

Unlike other numbers (such as 5, 6,’8,’11, 12, 27 and paradoxically 2), the number 3 has rarely seen its holder graduate as world champion. The figure is interesting with regard to the 1974-1995 period, in which the teams always kept the same numbers season after season apart from who won the world championship. But it is even more striking looking back over the years between 1996 and 2013, in which they reassigned based on the previous year’s ranking. Often, then, the 3 went to the vice world champion. But only twice did it accompany a driver to victory in the championship.

To rediscover them one must turn the calendar back at least 25 years. In fact, the only two world champions with the number 3 on the hood for the entire championship were Jacques Villeneuve in 1997 and Michael Schumacher in 2000. After them, the list of world champions who stumbled into flop seasons just when they were lucky enough to get the number Verstappen wanted for himself in 2026 is very rich. They range from Mika Hakkinen to Lewis Hamilton himself, via Juan Pablo Montoya, Jenson Button, Kimi Raikkonen and Schumacher again, among others. But in the first year behind the wheel of a then unreliable and often slow Mercedes. To end, in 2013, with Fernando Alonso and a Ferrari that also that year betrayed early-season expectations.

Before and after, too, little satisfaction for the 3. Awarded to Tyrrell in 1974, when Formula 1 decided that drivers and cars should always have the same number, since then the British team experienced an unstoppable decline until its closure. From 2014 to 2024, however, it was Daniel Ricciardo who chose it for himself. The very driver who left Red Bull almost annihilated by the’explosion of Max Verstappen.

“My favorite number has always been 3, apart from 1. The number 33 has always been good, but I prefer a 3 to two. It represents double luck, but I have already had luck in Formula 1”, are the words with which Verstappen explained his choice to ‘Viaplay’. Curious is the reference precisely to luck: one of the aspects that the’Dutchman will have to challenge during 2026.