Jenson Button, McLaren, Interlagos, 2012

McLaren go 100 races without a win as Hamilton equals Raikkonen record

2018 Bahrain Grand Prix stats and facts

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With 182 world championship race victories, McLaren has more F1 wins than any team bar Ferrari. However yesterday marked their 100th race since the last time one of their drivers stood on the top step of the podium.

While the team blamed its struggles over the past three seasons on the shortcomings of its Honda power unit, those races only account for 60% of this win-less streak.

Jenson Button scored the team’s last win in the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix in a car powered by a Mercedes V8. Since then they started a further 38 races with Mercedes power (19 V8, 19 V6 hybrid turbo), 60 with Honda and two with Renault.

There was some consolation for McLaren in that at this early stage they are ahead of Red Bull in the constructors’ championshipand Fernando Alonso is fourth in the drivers’ points standings.

Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, Bahrain International Circuit, 2018
Bahrain Grand Prix in pictures
But it will not have gone unnoticed in Woking that the team’s cars were out-qualified by both Honda-powered Toro Rossos on Saturday, and that Pierre Gasly came home fourth for the team on Sunday. Gasly’s first points finish equalled the best result Toro Rosso has scored since Sebastian Vettel’s victory for them at Monza in 2008.

That was the first of 49 wins for Vettel, the most recent of which came yesterday in a race which also marked his 200th career start.

Vettel is the 18th driver to reach a double century. The last to do so was Lewis Hamilton in Spa last year, who also won the race. Three other drivers scored wins in their 200th races: Michael Schumacher (2004 European Grand Prix), Button (2011 Hungarian Grand Prix) and Nico Rosberg (2016 Singapore Grand Prix).

By winning the first two races of 2018 Vettel has gone one better than he did last year, when he took a win and a second place. This bodes well for his championship chances: The last time a driver won the first two races of a season but didn’t win the championship was 36 years ago, when Alain Prost’s Renault proved too unreliable for take him to the 1982 crown.

Hamilton survived a controversial clash with Max Verstappen to score points for the 27th race in a row. That equals the record held by Kimi Raikkonen, which Hamilton could break in Shanghai this weekend.

While Hamilton sustained his streak of scoring points, Marcus Ericsson will be relieved to end his point-less run. He came home ninth in Bahrain, which would otherwise have been his 50th consecutive race without a point.

Valtteri Bottas set the fastest lap of the race for the fourth time in his career, which means he now has as many as Sergio Perez, as well as Jean Alesi, Jo Siffert, Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Patrick Depailler.

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Review the year so far in statistics here:

Have you spotted any other interesting stats and facts from the Bahrain Grand Prix? Share them in the comments.

2018 Bahrain Grand Prix

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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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42 comments on “McLaren go 100 races without a win as Hamilton equals Raikkonen record”

  1. The last time a driver won the first two races of a season but didn’t win the championship was 36 years ago, when Alain Prost

    In a season where Rosberg won the WDC after taking the lead from Pironi who’d led the championship (iirc by far) before he got sidelined some time after Villeneuve’s death driving a WCC-winning(-to-be) Ferrari I wouldn’t have expected Prost to have won the first 2 races.

    1. Tommy Scragend
      9th April 2018, 12:21

      Prost actually finished third on the track in Brazil – the second race of 1982 – but Piquet and Rosberg who finished first and second were both disqualified for running illegal ballast in the form of water tanks supposedly used for cooling the brakes, but in practice just a ruse to allow the cars to run underweight. The rules allowed for fluids to be replenished prior to the car being weighed at the end of the race.

  2. Mercedes engine development looks to have stood still over the winter compared to Renault, Ferrari and Honda, only 3 Mercedes engines finished in the top 3.

    Only 1 solitary point scored by a non works Mercedes engined driver in the first two races, or put another way, Mercedes dead last in the ‘customer engine’ championship!

    Early days yet I know, but telling signs!

    1. Luis Rodrigues
      9th April 2018, 12:30

      Law of diminishing returns. It gets to a point when the concept is so refined that no matter how much you develop, the gains will always be small. Give it enough time and all the other manufacturers will catch up and even if they don’t, they will not be far behind.
      Ferrari is already there or thereabouts.
      The reason for Mercedes costumers not scoring more points is altogether different. Mercedes chooses carefully who they supply engines to. Red Bull wanted them and so did McLaren, but they were out of stock at the time.

      1. @swh1386: You make a very good point. However, this is a bit of an exaggeration:

        Mercedes dead last in the ‘customer engine’ championship

        Since Honda have no customer teams, there would only be three participants in that theoretical “customer engine championship”. Mc and RB, the customers of Renault, have budgets two or three times bigger than the other customer teams, so the comparison isn’t meaningful. In the end the only meaningful thing to compare is Mercedes customers vs. Ferrari customers. In that regard, though, you are spot on, the advantage Ferrari customers have shown over Merc customers so far is shocking.

      2. That’s the annoying thing about the engine rules changing to minimise costs, it’s only when race 7 ends will the best engine be evident. My initial guess is Mercedes have been too conservative and Honda are willing to turn it up and take penalties every 4-5 races.

    2. SparkyAMG (@)
      9th April 2018, 13:45

      Whilst The Ferrari power unit certainly looks on par with that of Mercedes, Renault in quali trim still has a bit to make up. There’s no doubt Honda has taken a huge leap forwards though and it’s great to finally see some equality between all of the power unit manufacturers.

      The comment about customer teams isn’t related to power unit performance but is rather due to the fact Williams and – to a lesser extent – Force India are the least improved teams so far this year. I expect Force India should improve once they’ve got the cash to stick some proper upgrades on the car, but Williams look like a team lost at sea.

  3. The third race weekend in a row (the Abu Dhabi GP of last season included) in which an unsafe release in the pit lane has occurred. Also, the third time that Kimi has been a victim of this type of error (the previous two instances happened in Melbourne in 2015, and at COTA in 2016).
    – The first double-DNF for Red Bull since the 2012 Italian GP (although both then-RBR-drivers Vettel and Webber were classified in that race as they had reached 90% of the full race distance before retiring, but still).
    – Verstappen has now DNF’d on this circuit for two consecutive seasons.
    – Vettel has now won on this circuit for two successive seasons.
    – Six drivers (Perez, Stroll, Sirotkin, Hartley, Grosjean, and Leclerc) are still yet to open their points tallies for this season after two races, and on the teams’ side, Williams is the only team that still sits at zero points after two races.
    – Gasly achieved his personal best F1-race result so far and at the same time opened his F1-career points tally as well in his 7th attempt. Also, the first time that he’s received the ‘driver of the day’ nomination.

    1. Michael Brown (@)
      9th April 2018, 14:09

      @jerejj Vettel won 2012 and 2013, so his 4 wins at this circuit come in pairs of two.

      1. @mbr-9 Indeed. Good addition.

        1. Jonathan Parkin
          9th April 2018, 20:52

          Didn’t Vettel get a dns for 2014. If he did you could technically say he’s won four consecutive Bahrain GP’s

          1. No 2015 his Ferrari broke down on warm up lap. He finished 2014 behind his team mate Daniel Ricciardo. He has won the 2012, 2013, 2017 and 2018 Bahrain GPs.

          2. @modtl ”No 2015 his Ferrari broke down on warm up lap.” – That happened in 2016 to be precise.

    2. Frank Pallay (@frankiegoestohollywood)
      9th April 2018, 15:59

      If we didn’t count Monza 2012 (and I think we shouldn’t bc they were both classified) then the last Red Bull double DNF was Korea 2010 (!). Anyway, it was the longest serving streak among all teams.

      1. @frankiegoestohollywood Technically, a driver DNF’s whenever he doesn’t reach the chequered flag regardless of how many laps out of the full race distance of any given circuit he’s driven prior to retiring, so I regard a driver having DNF’d as long as he doesn’t reach the chequered flag regardless of whether he gets classified or not. TBH, I’ve never really understood the point of the rule of classifying a DNF-driver if he’s driven at least 90% of the full race distance.

        1. @jerejj the point is that only classified drivers can score points.
          Going back in history, the 1966 Monaco Grand Prix only had 4 classified drivers and, consequently, only those 4 drivers were awarded points.

    3. I forgot to include earlier: Sainz finally managed to reach the chequered flag in Bahrain. Usually, it’s third, but this time the fourth time was the charm for him.

  4. Wow, 100 races already… This also underlines how inspired HAM’s departure and also how uninspired ALO’s arrival were. Not having their own engine didn’t help them in the current formula and I’m afraid that being a customer to a manufacturer (Renault) who has its own car on the grid might be a problem too. On the long term, the Honda engine seems to be the way to go for all teams aspiring for wins and even titles.

  5. * This was Red Bull’s second-worst race in history in terms of laps completed. In Hungary 2005 Coulthard and Klien both retired on the first lap in separate incidents.
    * The race included three retirements, with all being GP winners. Only once there has been more retirements with 100% of them being GP winners. This happened in Japan 2003 where four retirements were Fisichella, Alonso, Frentzen and Montoya.
    Races where retirements included future winners are not included. Last time there was more than three retirements including only winners or future winners was Australia 2011: five (Barrichello, Rosberg, Kovalainen, Schumacher and Maldonado). The record is 12 from British GP 1979.

  6. It was also the first time since 2014 that both McLarens scored points in two consecutive races. That’s a LONG way.

  7. Hamilton is the first driver in the history of the World Championship to start 100 Grand Prix for two different constructors (110 for McLaren, 100 for Mercedes).

    1. What about Button? More than 100 for BAR/Honda/Brawn, then more than 100 for McLaren.

  8. Fourth place for Gasly is the best result for a Honda powered car in a Formula One race since the 2008 British Grand Prix.

  9. Wow! How come no one else has done this?
    Alonso spent 6 (03-06,08-09) seasons with Renault and 5 with Ferrari (10-14). He must have 100 with each, right?
    Kimi has also spent 5 seasons with Mclaren (02-06) and 6+ with Ferrari (07-09,14-18). Even he doesn’t have 100?

    1. No. No need to even check the numbers. 20+ races seasons are new in F1, we’ve only had two of them so far. Which means that in the past making 100 starts with the same team required staying with that team for at least 6 seasons, 5 was not enough. Since Lewis is the only driver who has stayed for 6+ seasons with two different teams, he’s also the only one with 100+ starts with two teams.

    2. It’s no big wonder ’cause pre-2010 the norm was 17 races per season. If I’m not wrong, the first season to have 18 races was 2004. Still, didn’t became the norm, the 2007 and 2009 seasons had again only 17 races. Plus, 2003 season had only 16 races. So, back then they needed at least 6 full seasons to reach the 100 mark. These +20 races seasons and having the best car from 2014 onwards helped significantly HAM in taking some records earlier. For example, if the seasons were like 17-18 races max in the last decade, only maybe this year he would have reached Senna’s number of PP, 60 wins, 200 starts etc.

    3. After Bahrain, Alonso has 105 starts for Renault, 96 for Ferrari and 75 for McLaren, Räikkönen has 132 starts for Ferrari and 87 for McLaren.

      1. Full list of drivers with at least 50 starts for the same constructor is here:

        1. Full list of drivers with at least 50 starts for the same constructor is here: http://www.statsf1.com/en/statistiques/pilote/gp/meme-constructeur.aspx

          1. Michael Brown (@)
            9th April 2018, 15:57

            Thanks for this list, rob91! I can see that both Alonso and Vettel can equal this record in the next season provided that they stay with their current teams. With 61 GPs with Ferrari, Vettel can reach 100 by round 21 of 2019. With 75 GPs with McLaren, Alonso can reach 100 by round 7 of 2019.
            Of course, we don’t know if there will be 21 races in 2019, because Hockenheim, Spa, and Suzuka do not have contracts for 2019 yet.

  10. Who won in their 200th race?
    Vettel – yesterday
    Hamilton – Belgium 2017
    Rosberg – Singapore 2016
    Schumacher – Spain 2004
    any others?

    1. Button – Hungary 2011

      1. Alonso – China 2013.

        1. Alonso’s 200th was actually Bahrain 2013 I believe.

  11. McLaren has only secured 2 podium finishes since Hamilton’s departure (Australia 2014).

    When Hamilton left McLaren, Jenson Button declared, “this is my team now”

    History has shown that all teams spearheaded by Jenson, tends to decline as the seasons progresses.

  12. 10th Ferrari win for Vettel, one more to equal both Massa and Alonso. Next up is Ascari in 13 and Lauda on 15. Let’s assume Schumacher with 72 is out of touch. By winning his tenth he has also past Kimi who has 9 wins for the Scuderia.

    Alonso won his in 95 races, if Vettel wins in China he’ll have done it in 62.

    1. @flatsix I tallied up Ferrari’s race winning drivers, and it surprised me that only six drivers have won a double figure number of races with the team (Schumacher, Lauda, Ascari, Alonso, Massa and Vettel). And Lauda’s tally of 15 is the 2nd highest.

  13. 4th win for Vettel at Sakhir – equals Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Suzuka.

    First no-score for Red Bull since Russia 2016. Mercedes now have the longest uninterrupted streak (38 races, last no-score was Spain 2016).

    22nd consecutive year in which at least 1 Mercedes-powered car has scored a fastest lap (currently 1 behind Ferrari’s record, but Ferrari will extend their streak to 24 if a Ferrari-powered car manages a fastest lap this year).

    Both Hamilton and Vettel scored their 51st poles in Bahrain.

    41st time Vettel and Hamilton have shared the podium – equals Senna-Prost and Schumacher-Barrichello.

    First time since 2008 that Ferrari have scored pole in 1 of the first 2 races of the season.

    First time Ferrari have managed back-to-back wins since Italy and Singapore 2010 (which was also a night race where the winner only narrowly scored victory).

    5th consecutive 7th-place start for Hulkenberg.

    Thanks to statsf1.com and magnetimarelli.com for some of these.

  14. By winning in Bahrain, this is the first time that:

    Vettel won back-to-back races since the 2013 USA and Brazilian Grands Prix (part of 9 race winning streak)

    Vettel’s 10th race win for Ferrari, overtaking teammate Raikkonen (9 wins)

    Vettel reached 10 wins for Ferrari in 61 starts, exactly the same as Alonso (61st start – 2013 Chinese GP)

    But both are behind Schumacher who reached 10 wins in 39 starts (1998 Canadian GP)

    Since Vettel joined Ferrari and won his 10th Grand Prix for them….

    Lewis Hamilton has won 29 races out of 62 (46.8% total)… showing Mercedes’ dominance in the hybrid era

    Ferrari’s 10th win since 2015, a short number behind Mercedes’ 47 wins (out of 62) ….

  15. fernandonotalonso
    10th April 2018, 14:28

    I thought Red Bull’s last double non-score in a race was in Korea 2010?

    And if I’m not mistaken, Toro Rosso’s best result before this 4th place in Bahrain 2018 was Carlos Sainz Jr’s 4th place finish in Singapore, 2017.

  16. The most successful drivers of the hybrid era have the following number of wins since 2014:
    Hamilton 40
    Rosberg 20
    Vettel 10
    Ricciardo 5

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