Alonso equals Senna’s tally of 80 podiums

2012 Italian Grand Prix stats and facts

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Lewis Hamilton scored his 20th career victory and his first Italian Grand Prix win. He now has as many wins to his name as Mika Hakkinen.

This was the third consecutive win for McLaren. The last time they managed that was in 2008 when Hamilton won the British and German Grands Prix, and Heikki Kovalainen claimed victory in Hungary.

Hamilton set his 23rd pole position which moves him back in front of Fernando Alonso, needing one more to break into the all-time top ten.

With Jenson Button second on the grid, this was McLaren’s 62nd one-two, moving them ahead of Williams. Only Ferrari have more, with 70, though they haven’t locked out the front row since the 2008 French Grand Prix.

Red Bull failed to score for the first time since the 2010 Korean Grand Prix, ending their 33-race streak of points finishes.

Alonso’s 80th podium puts him on a par with Ayrton Senna. Alonso took 189 races to reach 80 podiums whereas Senna made 161 career starts. They are tied in third place for most podiums behind Michael Schumacher (155) and Alain Prost (106).

Alonso has finished on the podium in all three of the Italian Grands Prix he has started for Ferrari.

The first-lap crash at Spa brought Alonso’s streak of consecutive points finishes to an end. Kimi Raikkonen is now the leading driver in terms of successive points scores, having racked up ten in a row since the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Alonso was out-qualified by Felipe Massa for the first time this year – indeed, the first time since last year’s Korean Grand Prix.

Narain Karthikeyan also out-qualified Pedro de la Rosa for the first time this year. Karthikeyan hadn’t out-qualified a team mate since the 2005 Chinese Grand Prix, though to be fair he did not race from 2006-2010 or during half of 2011.

Sebastian Vettel was classified in last place for the first time since the 2008 Turkish Grand Prix.

In another parallel with 2008 a Ferrari-engined car led at Monza but not in a Ferrari chassis. This time it was Sergio Perez’s Sauber – on the previous occasion it was Vettel’s Toro Rosso, which went on to win.

No Italian in the Italian Grand Prix

There was no Italian driver on the grid for the Italian Grand Prix for the first time since 1969.

Only 15 drivers started the 1969 race, representing eight nations: Austria, New Zealand, Britain, France, Australia, Switzerland, Mexico and Belgium. Italian Ernesto Brambilla (brother of 1975 Austrian Grand Prix winner Vittorio) was entered in a Ferrari but failed to qualify.

This year there wasn’t even an Italian driver participating in free practice, however Ma Qing Hua became the first Chinese driver to participate in an official F1 weekend with HRT. I wonder whether in years to come we’ll look back on that as a sign of the changing times.

Will Italy have a driver in F1 again soon? Davide Valsecchi moved back into the lead of the GP2 championship over the weekend.

However the only two drivers in GP2’s seven-year history to finish in the top two places and not gain a place in F1 were the two Italians who did so: Giorgio Pantano (2008 champion) and Luca Filippi (2011 runner-up, who won the feature race on his return to the category on Saturday).

Pedro de la Rosa’s 97th start

“Making it to 100 Grands Prix is something very special,” said Pedro de la Rosa ahead of the race. But had he really hit a century?

This was in fact de la Rosa’s 112th participation in an F1 race weekend. However that includes 12 drives for McLaren in free practice only during the 2005 season.

Furthermore de la Rosa also did not officially start the 2000 Monaco Grand Prix or the 2010 Malaysian Grand Prix. In the former the original start was aborted and de la Rosa did not start the new race due to damage. And his car broke down on the way to the grid at Sepang two years ago.

And on top of that he failed to qualify at Melbourne this year. So while we can call this the 100th race that de la Rosa was entered for with the intention of starting it, it was in fact only his 97th Grand Prix start.

His F1 career has been spread across 14 years. De la Rosa made his debut with Arrows in the 1999 Australian Grand Prix:

And finally…

Vettel might not have had much to celebrate at Monza but he did mark one milestone with 50 tally marks on top of his helmet.

What was he commemorating? Why, his fiftieth different helmet design, of course…

Review the year so far in statistics here:

Spotted any other interesting stats and facts from the Italian Grand Prix? Share them in the comments.

2012 Italian Grand Prix

Browse all 2012 Italian Grand Prix articles

Images © Honda, Daniel Kalisz/GP2 Media Service, Red Bull/Getty images

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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138 comments on “Alonso equals Senna’s tally of 80 podiums”

  1. Read this somwhere else, but Grosjean took out all three podium finishers in Spa last week.

    In the order they finished yesterday ;)

    1. I noticed that yesterday (didnt read it, just saw it for myself). I’d call that poetic justice, as I’m sure all three would have in all likeliness been in the points in Spa.

      1. Pure poetry.

    2. @ral How did I not notice that? I must be getting on..

    3. The last time that none of the podium finishers finished the previous race appears to have been Spain 2001 (M Schumacher, Montoya, and Villeneuve all failed to finish the previous race in San Marino). The last time that the podium finishers all failed to score in the previous race appears to be Bahrain 2010 (Alonso, Massa, Hamilton all failed to score in Abu Dhabi 2009 – Massa didn’t even race). Restricting it to pairs of races in the same season gives Britain 2008 (Hamilton, Heidfeld, Barrichello all failed to score in France).

      A couple of other races that come close:

      Italy 2010 – Alonso, Button & Vettel finished 1st, 2nd, 4th having all non-scored in Belgium.
      Germany 2010 – Ferrari 1-2 despite no-score in Britain (and Vettel only 7th).

      However, not only did Hamilton, Perez and Alonso all fail to finish in Belgium, they also completed a total of 0 laps between them. This could well be a first!

  2. I bet Alonso would love to be on eighty pole positions!

  3. 50 helmets?? thats madness.

    1. Ι agree! 50 helmets in 94 races (1 helmet per just less than 2 races)

      1. That sounds expensive, i’m sure the guys on Toro Rosso can’t afford that, now it’s understandable why he has so many helmets.

    2. Yes, truly — it’s a number that keeps me awake at night. When will this madness end??

      1. As drivers can keep their helmets back home, Vettel will have more and more helmets. Just imagine the collection he’ll get when hie’ll retire!

    3. It’s quite a sad statistic, really.

      1. I agree, it seems somewhat attention seeking. Saying that all the Red Bull and Toro Rosso drivers have somewhat homogenised and boring helmets because of all the advertising so I guess he does it to stand out.

        Personally I miss the old days where a driver had one helmet that was really identifiable to him, in the 80’s and 90’s there were some real classic ones like Alesi, Berger, Schumacher in his Benetton and early Ferrari years, Hill, Hakkinen, Prost and of course Senna. Nowadays there’s only really Hamilton, Button (who basically ripped off Mansell) and Massa’s designs which stand out for me. Schumacher’s stands out as well I guess but I definitely prefer the one he used before Barrichello joined Ferrari.

        1. Actually, I find ALL those drivers to be sad and attention seeking with regard to their helmet designs. I say we go back to this aesthetic.

        2. Lol Button ripped off Mansell and Hamilton ripped no one, it must be really hard to come up with a truly original helmet, especially if they end up all having the union jack colours.

          1. I heard Hamilton ripped Senna – apparently because it made it easier for daddy to spot him.

    4. It’s just a bit of fun; as long as he (or Red Bull) are happy with it, and can afford it, what’s the problem?and anyway, it’s giving Arai extra custom, which can only be a good thing.

      1. I’m with you on this, I don’t think it’s sad or attention seeking, just a bit of fun! Personally I enjoy the helmet changes, he’s had some great designs.

        1. Michael Brown (@)
          10th September 2012, 21:52

          Because it’s Vettel, he gets more hate for it

          1. Yes – strange isn’t it? He’s such a nice, bright guy off track, great language skills, sense of fun… Yet on track, he’s different. Not a Maldonado, for sure, but maybe a bit too Schumacher.

            Maybe that’s just my pro-McLaren bias.

        2. I enjoy them, too. And I enjoy how much they annoy people almost as much. ;-)

          1. Haha! True! I find it funny some people think that having so many designs means he’s vain, egotistical or immature! It’s only a helmet design!

          2. It’s because everything he does is interpreted that way. Like extending “the finger”! And walking! And breathing! (Have you ever noticed the specific way he inhales? Soooooo annoying and arrogant! Like he thinks he totally deserves the oxygen and always knew he was going to get it.)

          3. Oh don’t get me started on his breathing! Have you seen how he smiles when he’s being interviewed? Like he’s so much smarter than everyone else their questions amuse him for being so simple? What a brat! And then he’s all polite and funny and engaging. I know what he’s really like!

    5. We’re just lucky Webber uses a consistent helmet so we know the non-Webber RB is Vettel.

      Imagine if they both changed designs so frequently!

      1. Yeah, you’d be forced to use the on-board camera colors!

  4. Alonso was out-qualified by Felipe Massa for the first time this year – indeed, the first time since last year’s Korean Grand Prix

    Was he? It seems I can’t get the right meaning of “out-qualified”. It happened the car didn’t serve Alonso a real q3 laptime, therefore, there wasn’t any real competition between Massa and Alonso.

    1. Still outqualied….

    2. I think if Alonso couldn’t set a faster time than Massa for the starting grid, then he was out-qualified by Massa. Simple.

    3. @architrion
      Sure, but that is how statistics are. Massa started in front of Alonso, therefore he was outqualified.
      If you suddenly start throwing in ifs and buts in the statistics then its never going to make sense.

    4. @architrion We all know the circumstances of Q3 and I doubt Alonso would have been out-qualified if he’d had a healthy car, but it doesn’t change the fact that he was out-qualified.

      1. For sure. It was irony on my comment, but I was making a question about my english (poor english, indeed). So…. out-qualified means defeated, plain and simple?

        1. No… it means he was out-qualified. Defeated means Massa to ‘overthrow’ or ‘beat’ him, which because of the lack of competitiveness of Alonso is subjective and debatable.

          http://thesaurus.com/browse/defeat

          Massa simply qualified in a better place than Alonso because of the circumstances, hence he out-qualified.

          /pedant :)

        2. @architrion I would say “out-qualified” means “qualified in front of”, nothing more than that.

          1. thank you all, guys. appreciated.

        3. Would have been better if Massa out qualified Nando if he didn’t have the rollbar problem, know what i mean?

    5. Which is why stats are absolutely useless.

    6. I must agree, as I said on saturday, you can’t really outqualify someone who can’t compete. It is like seeing Usain Bolt standing on a track and then running past him claiming you won; yes, you reached the finish lie before he did but did you outrun him?
      Nevertheless Massa ended up in front and that sure must feel good for him also being that far up the grid again. Its not like it takes away anything from Alonso.

      1. and anyways, Massa was on the top of his game again, good driving, sensible driving and never really slower then alonso.. After he complied to teamorders i think his motivation slipped a little and thats how alonso racked up the 9sec gap

        1. Rather he struggled with tyre degradation more than Alonso.

      2. No, it’s like being entered in a race with Usain Bolt, running the full distance and having Bolt trail you across the line having pulled a muscle.

    7. Statistically not realistically, that’s obvious, the race proved everything, Brundle was quite clear about it.

  5. Mentioned it somewhere else but I guess it’s more appropriate here.

    It’s the first time Sauber, as a team, break the 100 points barrier. Except for the BMW era, of course. :)

    1. However the points system has changed a lot in the last 10 years. Based on the 2003-2009 points system, Sauber would now have 38 points against 53 for 2001 (also converted to 2003-2009, was 21 points).

      1. A small error-Sauber would have 52 points in 2001, based on the 2003-09 scoring system. Heidfeld with 28 and Kimi with 24.

  6. 20 career wins for Hamilton now! I know its been said a few times in the last few years but I do think this really is a golden age of F1. In 20-30 years time people will remember Hamilton, Alonso & Vettel among the all time greats, I’ve got no doubt about it. Its easy to look back with the rose tinted glasses on and say these drivers dont match up with Senna, Prost, Mansell, Stewart etc but The stats are starting to speak for themselves. Since the 80s the championship has generally consisted of 16-20 grand prix and all them 3 drivers are pushing their way into the top 10s of various records. Alonso probably has an other 5 years left in him while Hamilton & Vettel have at least 10 probably! going to be great being a spectator!

    1. Vettel could have another 10 years, but Hamilton…….

    2. You can argue that the average F1 career is longer these days, dependent on finances and talent, of course.

      1. I suppose yeah, if you compare say the 70s drivers then I’d agree. But generally from the 80s drivers (who managed to stay in F1 – So the better drivers) were having careers of 10 years and more. Whats tended to happen in the last 10 years is drivers are starting their careers much younger, but not many drivers race into their 40’s (Schumacher the obvious exception)

        Either way my point was that these drivers are certainly comparable to the greats of the past on a purely statistical point of view at least.

        1. I agree that we are living in a golden age of F1, regardless of the statistics! However I’ve been thinking about why and how Hamilton and Vettel especially are working their way up the all time leaderboards in terms of poles,podiums and wins. There is some slight inflation going on in my view.
          This is cause by a number of factors that you and others have mentioned but include things such as the increased reliability of the cars, the stability in performance of the top teams over the past few years, and that Vettel and Hamilton have been in machinery to win consistently from very early in their careers.
          This is coupled with an increased Championship. When I started watching around 16 races was the norm, now it’s going to be 20+ GP’s a year. Those extra few all add up over a career that could span 15 years. Taken all together it’s no wonder that should Vettel and Hamilton continue as the have been going they will pass Mansell’s tally of 31 in the not too distant future. I can easily see both those drivers going ahead of Prost before they retire. Alonso could as well, but I think it unlikely.

    3. Thy will be ranked alongside the all-time greats, but in my opinion, none of them (with the possible exception of vettel) can conjure Clark-like levels of domination.

    4. @aledinho Absolutely. The perfect way to come out of the early 21st century Ferrari domination. We are truly blessed with all this talent :D

      1. It will easily be looked back upon as a Golden era.

        We have Schumacher: 91 wins
        Alonso: 30 wins
        Vettel: 22 wins
        Hamilton: 20 wins
        Raikkonen: 18 wins
        Button: 14 wins
        Massa: 11 wins
        Webber: 9 wins

        Other than Hamilton and Vettel who have only been at it for a handful of years, all the other drivers on the list have been in F1 for a decade or more now. And between them have dominated the sport. Sure Mansell had 31, Senna 41 and Prost 51, but they didn’t have the same parity among cars as the modern field nor did they have as many high level drivers to compete against.

        To have 6 World Champions on the grid is one thing, but to have 8 drivers who have at least 9 wins apiece to their name is even more impressive.

  7. Do we have 2 Giorgio Pantano ? Pantano raced for Jordan in 2004…….

    1. @khm That was before he won the GP2 title.

    2. No ther is only one Giorgio Pantano(as far as I know). What Keith meant was that Pantano was not able to find an F1 drive despite finishing in the top 2 in the GP2 seasonthe previous year(he won the 2008 GP2 series season).

      1. And Filipi? runner up….Also no seat. it must have something to do with Italians and Sponsorships??

        1. They have Di Resta :) and Massa, and Senna…

          1. Who are British, Brazilian and Brazilian respectively…

          2. You forgot Ricciardo….@Casanova – all whose great-great grandparents were Italian.

          3. Who is Australian.

  8. Bit of a silly stat but this is the 4th race where a car has had at least 1 wheel in the air….Petrovs wheelie, Hamiltons pit stop, Spa`s chaos and Vernge crash/wheelie.

    1. When did Petrov do a wheelie? I remember Webber’s in China too.

      1. @nick-uk Malaysia last year. He broke his steering column when he landed and had to retire.

        1. I knew that, I just thought we were only talking about 2012.

          1. @nick-uk Ah sorry. And once again I chide myself for answering comments from the admin panel and getting things out of context. Bad Keith.

    2. Webber’s wheelie in China and Kobayashi’s jump in Monaco as well?

    3. The real tight chicane in Singapore will surely produce more flying cars in two weeks!

  9. On Saturday the guys at SkySports mentioned that now McLaren has the most front row lockouts, overtaking Williams in this stat. Later Martin Whitmarsh also mentioned as “he was just told”, that McLaren took the lead in this rankings.
    I was curious and a bit sceptical about this, so i checked the stats, and that indeed says like above in the article, so the order is Ferrari (70), McLaren (62) and Williams (61). But yes, it was about one-twos on the grid, not front row lockouts. And it’s not the same, as you probably know, because until (I think) 1973 sometimes there were different grids, with three or four cars per row. I didn’t find any statistics about is, so I tried to count it by myself. So in this respect, McLaren and Williams have now 61 front row lockouts each, while Ferrari has only 55, because many of their one-twos came at the early ages, when sometimes there were a third or a fourth car in the front row from another team. However, they also scored some one-two-three, and one-two-three-four grid positions.

    1. good work!

    2. Ah, interesting, thanks @geocucc

  10. I thought Vettel only changed his helmet when he won with it. Clearly his 2012 ‘dry spell’ has mad him change up, which in my opinion totally deminishes the helmets. I could understand him changing after a win, they could become exclusive collectors items. Now, it’s like who cars who owns that helmet, he didn’t win with it.

    1. @nick-uk He just never use again a helmet with which he has won … quite different from changing after a win. But totally agree, he is going mad with those helmets, he probably have a room full of them.

      1. He should have to keep the same helmet for 5 consecutive races or get a 5 place grid penalty or perhaps only be allowed 8 helmets a season?

      2. It’s funny that drivers such Alonso and Webber that like to exchange helmets like jerseys have to own a separate room to keep all of Vettels helmets.

  11. This is what I noticed:

    – Just for the record: this was Michael Schumacher’s actual 300th GP, as he didn’t start the 1996 French GP.

    – Third place in qualifying was Felipe Massa’s best result since the 2011 Canadian GP, where he also qualified third. In the meantime, Fernando Alonso started in the top 3 on seven occasions.

    – This was Lewis Hamilton’s first victory at Monza, which means he has now won at 15 different venues. This ranks him 7th in the all-time list, tied with Niki Lauda and Damon Hill. With 23 different circuits, Michael Schumacher (of course) heads this list.

    – The same three drivers stood on the podium as in Malaysia, in reversed order. That´s the first time this happened this season.

    – For Fernando Alonso this is the 50th time he leads the World Championship.

    – After being the first team this season to win two races back to back last week, McLaren now becomes the first team to win three races in a row. The last time a team won three races in a row was Red Bull (read: Vettel) : the 2011 Belgian, Italian and Singapore GPs.

    – Kimi Räikkönen is now third in the championship: the last time he was in third was after the 2008 season finale at Interlagos. His last non-finish was the 2009 German GP, which means he now has a finishing streak of 21 races, which ranks his streak 7th in the all-time list. Chart leader Nick Heidfeld finished 33 races in a row between 2007 and 2009. Nico Rosberg also has a streak of 19 consecutive finishes since the 2011 Singapore GP.

    – Though finishing in a disappointing 13th place, this was actually Jérôme d’Ambrosio’s best classification of his career.

    – The last time both Red Bulls retired was at the inaugural Korean GP in 2010, 33 races ago. The team has scored points in all of these races, which ranks this streak seventh. McLaren and Ferrari have scored points in the last 51 and 41 races respectively. Just five more point scoring races for McLaren, and they will break Ferrari’s record (1999-2003).

    – Car numbers 1, 2 and 3 (Vettel, Webber and Button) all failed to score points. The last time this happened was the 2009 Abu Dhabi GP, where car numbers 1 to 5 (Hamilton, Kovalainen, Fisichella, Räikkönen and Kubica) all failed to score a point.

    – For the fifth time this season, the winner of the previous race didn’t manage to score a point: Button in Malaysia, Maldonado in Monaco, Hamilton in Valencia, Hamilton at Spa and now Button at Monza. This is very unusual, as it didn’t occur once last year. The last time a win was followed by a no-point score this often was in the 2005 season (seven times): Fisichella in Malaysia, Raikkonen at the Ring and Indianapolis (DNS), Alonso in Canada and Hungary, Montoya at Spa and Suzuka.

    1. Your brain/reseach skills are EPIC!

    2. Thanks for extra stats….great effort :)

    3. I love some for “But where does he get that from ?” … Great list again

    4. – Three British drivers managed to qualify in the top 4. The last time this happened was the 1995 Argentina Grand Prix: Coulthard 1st, Hill 2nd, Irvine 4th.

      1. this one’s my favorite by the way :)

    5. Superb!!!!!
      Just to add, all of the three podium finishers at Monza were taken out on the first lap at Spa.
      Also, Perez overtakes Johnny Herbert and Heinz-Harald Frentzen with the most podiums for Sauber(3). It is an amazing feat for the 22-year old.

    6. Interesting note on Schumacher’s 300th race, I dont think Sky, BBC or the stats roundup on here mentioned that. So perhaps we should come off of de la Rosa’s case for this been his 100th GP/97th Race ;)

      1. So Ricciardo will have to win the next race, otherwise he drops out of WDC contention – he’ll be gutted.

        1. Comment was meant to be a reply to @andae23 below!

        2. @jerseyf1 Yes, but Alonso musn’t score a single point. After that, Ricciardo must win every single race, with Alonso not scoring in any if those and Hamilton, Raikkonen etc must only pick up a few points for the next couple of races.

          Now let me describe the scene when Ricciardo will become champion: he gets into an argument with Kimi, which means he doesn’t get invited to Kimi’s party on Saturday before the Singapore GP. Kimi accidentally switched Vodka with turpentine or something, which means all 23 drivers are now out for the rest of the season. Then Ricciardo storms to victory in the next 7 races and claims the title!

          1. Words “long shot” somehow suggest themselves.

    7. – Mathematically, there are 18 drivers left that can still become world champion this year (so everyone except the Caterhams, Marussias, HRTs and d’Ambrosio).

    8. This was Perez his third podium: on all three occasions, Hamilton was on the podium too.

    9. Michael Brown (@)
      10th September 2012, 22:04

      No, Schumacher has 301 GPs, but 300 starts

      1. @lite992 I would say he has 301 weekend involvements, and 300 GPs (a GP is a race, and if you don’t start a race, your of course not in the hunt for winning the Grand Prix).

        1. Michael Brown (@)
          11th September 2012, 0:36

          Being involved in a weekend counts as the Grand Prix, starting the race is another statistic @andae23

  12. There is no Red Bull driver in the top three of the championship. This last happened after China this year and previously after China 2010.

    Red Bull’s lead in the WCC has been reduced to its lowest level since Spain, currently at 29 points.

    It is the first time since 1982 that no driver has won more than three races, thirteen races into the season. In 1987 and 2007 it took until the thirteenth race.

    Schumacher topped a practice session for the first time since China.

    McLaren missed out on a one-two finish. There has still been no one-two finish this season. If this continues to the end of the season, it will be the first time since 1977.

    The race was won from pole for the fourth time in a row, the second such streak this year (the other was China-Monaco). The last five-race streak was Hungary-Japan 2007.

    The podium has not been made up of the top three on the grid at any race this year. If this continues for the rest of the season it will be the first time since 2005.

    No driver has won consecutive races this year. If this continues for the rest of the season it will be the first time since 1974. The only other seasons this occurred were 1961 and 1958.

    1. Great stats !

    2. A couple more:
      McLaren have only twice got both drivers in the top five and they haven’t done it since China.

      Sauber got their fourth double points finish of the season, more than they have ever managed before.

  13. @keithcollantine
    In 2012, each Mclaren driver has failed to score at the race after a win in the previous round.
    By this method, Hamilton will not score in Singapore.

  14. 4th consecutive Italian grand prix with more than 5 retirements and 5th in 6 years where a McLaren retires

  15. Will Italy have a driver in F1 again soon? Davide Valsecchi moved back into the lead of the GP2 championship over the weekend.

    Valsecchi is in his fifth season of GP2. He’s only really competitive because the talent pool is pretty shallow this year. I don’t expect him to make it to Formula 1 any time soon, and if he does, I don’t expect him to last long.

    I think Itay’s best chance at getting a driver who can be successful is Raffale Marciello, who drives for the Prema Powerteam in Formula 3.

    1. Valsecchi is in his fifth season of GP2. He’s only really competitive because the talent pool is pretty shallow this year. I don’t expect him to make it to Formula 1 any time soon, and if he does, I don’t expect him to last long.

      When Maldo became GP2 champion two years ago, he was also one of the most experienced guys on the grid. Not to mention that so far all GP2 champions promoted to F1 later on.

      1. @andae23 Maldonado also comes with a ma$$ive cheque from PDVSA

    2. Le samourai?

    3. The talent pool is what it is. You can only beat who is there.

      After the 2011 GP2 season a number of drivers left the series due to the fear of failure factor. What I mean is they feared if they stayed another season in GP2 and failed to win the series their motor racing careers would be over (eg Bianchi, Bird etc). Davide Valsecchi does not fear failure.

  16. This is the first time in months that Maldonado went through an entire weekend without a penalty.

    1. :O Shocking!

      1. Pointless though, really…

        he didn’t score any points.

        But a decent weekend of keeping his nose clean will surely give the whole Williams team a small boost of confidence.

  17. If FA wins the wdc this year he would draw with Senna as the youngest 3 times dwc with 31 years.
    But that record wont last long before some german or british get an ovni and all the help in the world just to beat that record, like xfactor stars ahahahahaa.
    Like a crane in Nurburgring 2007 ahahahahaaa.
    I just wish F1 gets decentralized from england as much as i wish motogp does the same from spain.

    1. @jujj – You can hardly claim that Alonso (or any other champion) doesn’t get “all the help” possible to win a championship.

    2. You do realize that the Nurburgring isn’t in the UK, right?

  18. I know F1 drivers are egotistical and vain but vettel has gone overboard.
    I like it when drivers change they’re helmet once off because they are celebrating a home grand prix, or 100 grands prix, or a championship or something.
    But to celebrate the fact that u can think up of a new design for each race! Please Vettel celebrate something that’s worthwhile. I can pick out some drivers going back to the 50’s because of they’re helmets, please where a helmet that someone can bloody remember!

  19. My ongoing, recurring, semi-unbelievable stat continues – Still no Alonso, Vettel, Hamilton podium.

    1. It will likely happen before the end of the season, but it would be kind of cool if it never did!

  20. This was the third consecutive win for McLaren. The last time they managed that was in 2008 when Hamilton won the British and German Grands Prix, and Heikki Kovalainen claimed victory in Hungary.

    what i distinctly remember from that german grand prix was mclaren’s use of then-illegal team orders to switch lewis and heikki. the commentators acknowledged it as a fact of life and moved on, and there was no fan outrage.

    1. But the thing is, Heikki was clearly slower in that race (and throughout their seasons as teammates, he was faster basically just once when he got the lighter car for quali (2008 Silverstone) and took pole by half a second or something like that), and Hamilton probably would’ve passed him anyway.

    2. Hamilton was still able to get further up, as he did by winning the Grand Prix and would have past Kovalainen anyway, so it was pointless for Kovalainen to hold him up as McLaren could score more points.

      Ferrari on the other hand had a 1 – 2 almost in the bag and switched positions because Alonso would benefit from it. They scored equal points on the finish with that result, and lied about there intentions on camera with a sick display off Alonso asking Massa if he had a problem when he overtook him.

      There is a difference in teamorders, you know.

    3. But the team had used team orders to get Heikki into the points by sacrificing Hamilton’s pit stop for Heikki. When Hamilton finally stopped, he had dropped far back, he would eventually have overtaken Heikki, but would have used up much of his tyres in the process. Hence Heikki was returning the favour.
      So it was not blatant team orders, but loan that was paid back same race.
      Had Hamilton not let Heikki use up his own stop, Heikki would have been further down in the points. Secondly, if Heikki was that fast, why didn’t he come second at least.
      Hamilton went from 5th to a win, Heikki was still stuck in his position.

  21. It is the second time this year that Button and Vettel have both failed to score having finished 1st and 2nd in the previous race. It also happened to Hamilton & Grosjean in Canada/Europe (and Perez only finished 9th in Europe).

    Hamilton (who was Mr Consistency at the start of the season when he led the championship without having finished a race higher than 3rd), has managed the less-than-consistent run of DNF-win-DNF-win in the last 4 races (in fact he has had 3 wins and 3 DNFs in the last 7 races).

  22. Valsecchi doesn’t strike me as being a future F1 driver as I don’t think he has any connection with any team. Shame as he is the best placed to take advantage. If he had been able to win a race since Bahrain I think F1 teams would take more notice of him but he’s been very quiet since April.

    1. I say Sauber, With his erratic behavior he positions himself as a Valentino Rossi on 4 wheels. And we all know that Ferrari begged Rossi to join them on 4 wheels.
      Sauber happens to have those Ferrari engines in the back.
      Koba was also a DAMS driver. I hope this Italian doesn’t end up at a back marker. we need a flamboyant driver. We have a Rapper,Matador,Badguy,Hairdresser,Senior,Kiwi,Ninja so he deff would fit in perfectly

  23. All 3 of Perez’s Podiums have come at races where last year, he didn’t finish.
    Malaysia 2011 – He retired after being hit in the car with some debris.
    Canada 2011 – He didn’t start after the Monaco incident.
    Italy 2011 – Retired with a gearbox problem.

  24. They actually asked Pedro about his 100th start on the drivers’ parade, and he said that he looked into the statistics, and that he considered qualifying for a race as a GP start.

    Another interesting stat is that I think this was the first time while Alonso’s been at Ferrari that Massa has qualified in the Top 3 without Alonso also being there.

    1. Massa qualified second, ahead of Alonso in the 2010 Bahrein GP

  25. Webber’s first DNF since Italy 2011 – Rosberg now has the longest finishing streak (last DNF was Italy 2011). Webber and Rosberg share the longest unbroken classified streak.

    No Renault engine on podium for the first time since China.

    1. It wasn’t a DNF for Webber as he was classified.

  26. Narain Karthikeyan will not be the 2012 Formula One World Champion.

    1. erm..neither will be PDLR, Clock, PIC, Petrov, Kova, D’Ambrosio

  27. Vettel had 50 helmet “designs” not 50 actual helmets. just thought i’d put a stop to the madness of people talking about a room-full of helmets in Vettel’s house, or people being able to buy these helmets.

    1. I believe he only retires them when he wins wearing one, so he must have about 28 still in rotation?

      1. …designs, I mean. Not helmets ;)

  28. An interesting stat

    With Massa’s 4th place, he has now taken 11 wins, 11 2nds, 11 3rds and 11 4ths

    1. This must be the reason why he hasn’t been on the podium since 2010 ;)

  29. Massa now has 11 1sts, 2nds 3rds and 4ths which is quite an amazing statistic.

    1. (Not sure if this was already posted)

  30. Another one that has been pointed out on Autosport: Hamilton has now won at all the ‘current’ tracks to have hosted 30+ GPs (Silverstone, Monza, Spa, Nurburging, Hockenheim, Montreal, Monte Carlo). The only other driver to have done this is some German driver…

    Interlagos appears to be the ‘most classic’ track at which he is yet to win.

    1. Seems as though Prost has also managed it.

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