Kubica becomes F1’s 99th grand prix winner

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With Robert Kubica winning the first ever Formula 1 race for Poland there’s a bumper crop of facts and statistics following yesterday’s Canadian Grand Prix.

Nick Heidfeld is now the driver with the most second places and no wins, Kimi Raikkonen set yet another fastest lap, and McLaren & Ferrari’s domination of the top step of the podium came to an end.

Read on for more and post any other interesting stats you find below. Plus the championship standings in full.

Robert Kubica scored his first grand prix victory in his 29th F1 start. He is the first Polish driver to win an F1 race, making Poland the 20th nation to produce an F1 race-winning driver. A further win for Kubica will put them level with Mexico on two.

It was the second consecutive maiden victory for a driver at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

Kubica is the 99th Grand Prix winner and joins Jarno Trulli and Jenson Button as active drivers with a single Grand Prix win. There are now ten active Grand Prix drivers who have won a race, half the field.

And Kubica is also now leading the drivers’ championship by four points (see below) despite having only one win to the two each of Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen. If the championship were still running to the 1991-2002 points system he, Hamilton and Massa would be tied on 32 points with Raikkonen on 30.

BMW’s first win makes them the 31st team to win a race (having not won in their previous incarnation as Sauber). Seven other outfits have won just one race: Kuzma, Porsche, Eagle, Hesketh, Penske, Shadow and Stewart. They also scored their first one-two and are the first team to score their maiden victory with a one-two since Jordan at Spa-Francorchamps in 1998 with Damon Hill and Ralf Schumacher.

However it was the 20th win for a BMW engine, which had eight victories in the back of a Brabham (1982-5), one in a Benetton (1986) and ten in a Williams (2001-2004). It was BMW’s first win with a 2.4 litre V8, the others being 1.5 litre turbos or 3.0 litres V10s.

Nick Heidfeld finished second for the fifth time in his career, one of which was at this track last year. He is now the driver with the greatest number of second place finishes without winning a race, beating Stefan Johansson (four).

He is also tied for third among the drivers who have scored the most podiums without a win. He has nine, as do Jean Behra, Eddie Cheever and Martin Brundle. Here Johansson still leads the way (12) followed by Chris Amon (11).

Lewis Hamilton was on pole position for the eighth time in his career, putting him level with John Surtees and Riccardo Patrese. It was his second in a row in Montreal.

David Coulthard scored his 62nd podium in 236 starts, 37 races since his last one (Monaco 2006). It was also his first points of the season.

Timo Glock also scored his first points of the year, and his first for Toyota, at the track where he made his F1 debut in 2004.

For the fourth race in a row Kimi Raikkonen set the fastest lap. It was his 29th, putting him fourth in the all-time list, one behind Nigel Mansell and one ahead of Jim Clark.

It’s the second time in his career he’s set four in a row, the other occasion being between the 2005 French and Hungarian Grands Prix. The record for the most consecutive fastest laps belongs to Alberto Ascari (seven, Belgium 1952 – Argentina 1953) followed by Michael Schumacher (five, Bahrain – Europe 2004). Four consecutive laps have been achieved on three other occasions by Jackie Stewart, Gilles Villeneuve, and Nigel Mansell.

Mark Webber’s best-ever streak of five consecutive races in the points came to an end, as did Felipe Massa’s personal best streak of four consecutive podiums.

Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa have both scored two wins, a second, a third and a fifth this year. Hamilton’s single extra classification, 13th at Bahrain, noses him ahead in the championship standings.

McLaren and Ferrari’s record-breaking 24 consecutive race wins between them came to an end. Ferrari won 14 and Mclaren ten, the last race not won by either of these teams was the 2006 Japanese Grand Prix (won by Fernando Alonso for Renault).

Nelson Piquet Jnr has now gone seven races without scoring a point for Renault. It’s the longest point-less streak for a Renault driver since Patrick Tambay failed to score in the eight races between the 1985 British and Australian Grands Prix.

Finally, Rubens Barrichello made his official 257th start. He celebrated the milestone two races ago in Turkey, having counted two races where he reached the grid but did not start the races as ‘starts’.

Drivers’ championship standings

Robert Kubica 42
Lewis Hamilton 38
Felipe Massa 38
Kimi Raikkonen 35
Nick Heidfeld 28
Heikki Kovalainen 15
Mark Webber 15
Jarno Trulli 12
Fernando Alonso 9
Nico Rosberg 8
Kazuki Nakajima 7
David Coulthard 6
Rubens Barrichello 5
Timo Glock 5
Sebastian Vettel 5
Jenson Button 3
Sebastien Bourdais 2

Not scored

Anthony Davidson
Giancarlo Fisichella
Nelson Piquet Jnr
Takuma Sato
Adrian Sutil

Constructors’ championship standings

Ferrari 73
BMW 70
McLaren 53
Red Bull 21
Toyota 17
Williams 15
Renault 9
Honda 8
Toro Rosso 7

Not scored

Force India
Supre Aguri

Author information

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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15 comments on “Kubica becomes F1’s 99th grand prix winner”

  1. It is also the first race since Mexico in 1986 where a driver and team have taken their first victories together. On that occasion Gerhard Berger and Benetton both took their maiden triumph, quite interestingly with a BMW engine.

  2. Nice one Marty :-)

  3. Scott Joslin
    9th June 2008, 10:28

    Canada certainly seems a good track for drivers getting their first win. Kubica, Hamilton, Alesi, Boutsen…Villeneuve.

  4. michael counsell
    9th June 2008, 14:50

    Kubica has now overtaken his 2007 points tally after only 7 races

    Montreal is now the scene of Timo Glock’s two best F1 results (7th in 2004 and 4th this year) and his best Champ Car result (2nd in 2005)

    It is the first time Toro Rosso have ever recorded consecutive point finishes. Minardi last achieved this in Monaco and Spain 1994 with Alboreto and Martini respectively. They did however record consecutive top 8 finishes in Monaco and Canada 1995 with Martini and Badoer respectively.

  5. Really not looking good for Piquet. Every single other driver has scored points, with the exception of the FI and SA drivers – all of whom can be easily excused given that neither team has produced a car quick enough to qualify out of Q3. Piquet can’t use that excuse as his (albeit ‘double world champion’) teammate has scored 9 points so far.

  6. With Kubica-Heidfeld-Coulthard, it’s also the first time since Malaysia 2006 (Fisichella-Alonso-Button)that neither Ferrari nor McLaren driver steps on the podium, ending a 39 races streak.

  7. “Nelson Piquet Jnr has now gone seven races without scoring a point for Renault.”

    Poor kid, I give him two more races…It looks even worse when Sutil should have scored points last week. How long did Kovi go before scoring last year?

    Also, how many passes were there, I bet its been a while since we have seen that much over taking (thanks Massa!)

  8. Massa’s double overtake at the hairpin
    http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/3720/hairpinhx6.gif
    Lap 51: Kovalainen passes Barrichello at the hairpin and Massa passes both of them.

  9. Scott Joslin
    10th June 2008, 11:19

    Might need to check this one out keith, but with BMW coming in One and Two for their first victory. Was the last team to do this Jordan in 1998 with Hill & Schumacher at Spa?

  10. Scott – yes I think so, in fact I mentioned it in the article! :-)

  11. Forgive me for throwing in what some may see as a sour note, but this was the first Canadian Grand Prix since 1999 that was not a part of the North American doubleheader with Indianapolis. Indeed, a sad one for fans such as myself…

    Otherwise, a great group of new statistics. Here’s hoping Heidfeld picks up a win or two somewhere down the road- after sticking with the team for so long and delivering many points over the years, i’d be a great accomplishment for him.

  12. Good point Gman. I also found it interesting that the GP was sold out pretty much from practice onwards. Makes sense given that it was by far the closest race to the US (about 200 yards from US soil, next closest is probably either Brazil or Magny-Cous, making it an obvious choice for US fans to attend.

  13. Glock’s performance was great. He showed again that he can race well. Perhaps ITV reminding him that he would be back to scaffolding if he kept screwing up motivated him to perform.

    Coulthard is back and I love that he is. A podium is exactly what he needed and hopefully from here RB can cement 4th place. I hope DC will be back next year in the RB with the same driver-lineup and an RB5 that can challenge in the same way BMW are this year.

    Piquet made a bad error and had a very poor weekend. I really hope Renault start testing some alternative soon because there is no reason why they shouldn’t be collecting points each race (they are averaging just over a point a race at the moment). Alonso seems to be putting too much pressure on himself to get the car up the front which is resulting in errors, he should just let it work for him each race and at least finish mid-points.

  14. Kaiser Soze
    11th June 2008, 20:16

    Kubica will love numbers 6 and 8.

    He won on 8.6.2008. His first Grand Prix was on 6.8.2006 :)

  15. Right on Scootin’. I spent the day on Saturday in Albany, NY- about 250 miles south of Montreal. The Canadian GP is the only one that Americans can drive to this season, so I would expect many Americans to be there. I have my heart set on Indianapolis coming back next season and plan to be there if it is (and if I can afford it, given these huge price increases to travel,) but I’ll consider heading to Canada if it dosen’t come back on. While i’m sure the promoters don’t mind the extra sales, I firmly believe that having the USGP the following week is a plus for the Canadian event.

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