Australian Grand Prix 2007 Statistics & facts

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Which team took their best ever qualifying position? Which rookie took his team-mate to the cleaners? And just how far ahead are Ferrari.

All the stats and facts from the first race of the year are here.

Kimi Raikkonen took his first Grand Prix win for Ferrari. It was his first win since Suzuka 2005, when he won from 17th on the grid.

Similarly Felipe Massa finished 16 places higher than he started at Melbourne, rising from 22nd to 6th. This equalled his greatest position improvement in one race, in last year’s Malaysian Grand Prix when he started 21st and finished 5th.

Lewis Hamilton scored his first world championship points and his first podium podium. He is the 8th driver to finish third on his debut and the 16th to finish on the podium (a further six did so in the Indianapolis 500 when it counted towards the world championship).

Fernando Alonso started 2007 as he ended 2006 – finishing in second place.

Despite not winning the race, McLaren took the lead of the constructors’ championship with 14 points to Ferrari’s 13.

Raikkonen took the lead of the drivers’ championship for the first time since the 2003 Monaco Grand Prix. That year he led the championship from the second round of the championship (Malaysia) until the seventh, before eventual champion Michael Schumacher overhauled him. That was the only prior occasion on which Raikkonen has led the championship.

It was the first Grand Prix without Schumacher since the 1999 European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. Six drivers that participated in that race are still active today: Jarno Trulli, Rubens Barrichello and Ralf Schumacher (who finished second, third and fourth respectively), and Giancarlo Fisichella, David Coulthard and Alexander Wurz (who all retired). Ferrari have scored over one third of their total wins since that race, underlining their dominance in the Schumacher era.

Both Super Aguri-Hondas out-qualified both Hondas, and Williams-Toyota scored more points (2) than Toyota (1).

Takuma Sato got a Super Aguri into the final phase of qualifying for the first time, and gave them their highest ever qualifying position of tenth.

Raikkonen’s fastest lap was over one second faster than the next driver’s quickest (Fernando Alonso). It was also 0.8s faster than the previous year’s quickest, despite the introduction of control tyres, probably because last year’s Australian Grand Prix was held in unseasonably cool weather.

Neither of the celebrated rookies Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen out-qualified or out-raced their team mates – but Adrian Sutil beat Christijan Albers in both respects.

Melbourne hosted the first race of the year for the 11th time, more than any other circuit bar Buenos Aires in Argentina, which held F1 rounds from 1953-1995 including 15 season openers.

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Tags: f1 / formula one / formula 1 / grand prix / motor sport

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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One comment on “Australian Grand Prix 2007 Statistics & facts”

  1. Argentina is squashing their opponents in the world cup. Argentina is likely going to win it all, I pity whoever they’re playing next!

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