Verstappen started the race from second on the grid and couldn’t find his way into the lead off the line finding himself sandwiched between leader Sainz and Charles Leclerc in the second Ferrari car behind him.
Though at first the Dutchman sounded relaxed on team radio about his chances of finding a way past, by lap 10 he had grown more agitated. The SF-23’s straight-line speed was more than a match for his RB19’s performance through the final corner, and Sainz was playing a sterling defensive game into the first chicane, the track’s prime overtaking zone.
But on lap 15 Verstappen’s incessant pressure paid off. Sainz locked up into the first turn, gifting his pursuer a chance to take the racing line and get a better exit onto the long Curva Grande.
They ran side by side to the Roggia chicane, with Verstappen braving the outside line that became the inside track into the next turn, where he was later on the brakes to seize the advantage ahead of the Ferrari cars he would never relinquish.
With Sainz and Leclerc suffering higher tyre wear than the all-conquering Red Bull Racing car, Verstappen was able to gradually grow his lead to the end of the 51-lap race to record an unprecedented 10th consecutive victory, eclipsing the nine set by former Red Bull Racing driver Sebastian Vettel in his dominant 2013 campaign.
“It’s something you don’t expect to happen,” Verstappen said of his new benchmark. “I never thought at the beginning of the season that something like this was possible. I’m very proud.
“I’m just very proud also of the whole team effort, the whole year already. What we are doing at the moment, winning every race this year, is something that we definitely are enjoying, because I don’t think these kinds of seasons come around very often.”
What had started as an uncertain day for Red Bull Racing ended with a controlled one-two finish, with Sergio Pérez rising from fifth to second to record the team’s sixth top-tow lockout of the campaign and begin to put to bed his crippling midyear form slump.
The Mexican had long duels with Mercedes driver George Russell in the first stint before picking off the Ferrari teammates as their tyres expired, though he had to wait for Leclerc to fall out of his teammate’s DRS zone before being able to get close enough to match the red car for top speed.
“All the way through I was fighting, basically,” he said. “We had a terrible Saturday in terms of the [engine] issues we had in FP3 with the car that really put us back in qualifying, so I think we could have a better starting position, which definitely will have put us a lot closer in the fight for victory.
“But certainly we made a lot of progress, which is a positive thing. I think we’ve done very good set of directions, and then some work with the suspension as well. I’m able to feel quite a lot more comfortable.”
The Ferrari drivers duked it out for a spot on Monza’s famous podium overlooking the main straight. Sainz’s tyres had taken more of a beating thanks to his long defences of position, but the Spaniard’s defensive work forced Leclerc to get creative in making an attempt for third.
The Monegasque got his teammate into the first turn with a clinical slipstream with four laps to go, but when he locked up on entry, Sainz took the better line to race him up to Roggia in a remake of the move Verstappen put on him for the lead.
Sainz locked up into the next turn, almost causing a crash, but the pair navigated the battle cleanly, with the Spaniard emerging with third and to put the battle to bed.
“P3 in Monza in front of the tifosi is as good as it can get - at least for this weekend, because clearly Red Bull were quite a bit quicker than us today,” he said.
“There was always going to be a bit of a fight, a bit of a battle. In the end we kept it clean.
“Honestly, I enjoyed battling Max, battling Checo, battling Charles. I think it was a good day for F1 - a good show. I just did everything I could to stay in front and it worked.”
Mercedes driver Russell finished a long way behind Charles Leclerc in fifth place, with teammate Lewis Hamilton recovering from eighth to sixth, though not after crashing into Oscar Piastri in a clumsy overtaking attempt late in the race that left the Australian with a damaged car that put him out of points contention.
Thai driver Alex Albon was excellent in seventh, holding off McLaren’s Lando Norris and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso by less than 0.4 seconds at the flag after a race-long defence in his Williams car, which was rapid in a straight line but slow everywhere else, while Valtteri Bottas collected the final point in 10th.