Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, Circuit of the Americas, 2018

Raikkonen ends longest-ever wait between wins

2018 United States Grand Prix stats and facts

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As you’d expect, most of the key statistics from the United States Grand Prix concern Kimi Raikkonen ending his five-and-a-half-year wait for his 21st grand prix victory.

Or, to be precise, 2,044 days. This isn’t the longest wait between consecutive wins in terms of duration. After winning the 1983 season-finale at Kyalami, Riccardo Patrese had to wait 2,402 days for his next win at Imola.

But it is the longest wait in terms of the number of races which were held. There were 99 races between Patrese’s two wins, 114 between Raikkonen’s. Of those, Raikkonen only entered 112 (he missed the final two races of 2013) and started 111 (he qualified for last year’s Malaysian Grand Prix but did not start it).

Raikkonen has also established a new record for the longest gap between a driver’s first and last wins. Michael Schumacher first and 91st wins were spread over 14 years (5,145 days), but Raikkonen’s victory on Sunday came over 15 years (5.691 days) since his maiden win.

With his victory Raikkonen finally moved ahead of Mika Hakkinen to become Finland’s most successful driver in terms of race wins. Hakkinen still has one more world championship, however.

Raikkonen is the only driver to have won races in each of F1’s three most recent engine ‘eras’: V6 hybrid turbos, V8s and V10s (other drivers have won races using three or more different engine formats when multiple types were permitted).

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He also ended his streak of 30 consecutive podium finishes without a victory. This is almost double the previous record of 16 set by Jean Alesi.

Raikkonen got on course to win by passing Lewis Hamilton at the start. This was the first time Raikkonen had gained a place on lap one since he got ahead of Daniel Ricciardo on the first lap of the 2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Mercedes are poised to become the fifth team to score 100 pole positions. Hamilton took their 99th last weekend, which was also his 81st. However for the fourth time in his career he ended a winning streak of four consecutive races – he’s only made it further once, when he won five in a row in 2014.

Hamilton was beaten to third place by Max Verstappen, who made the biggest improvement over his qualifying position of any driver so far this year by climbing 16 places from 18th to second. He and Ricciardo now have the same number of wins (four) and podiums (19) during their time together as Red Bull team mates.

Finally, the disqualifications of Esteban Ocon and Kevin Magnussen promoted Brendon Hartley to a career-best ninth.

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Review the year so far in statistics here:

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

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2018 United States Grand Prix

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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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16 comments on “Raikkonen ends longest-ever wait between wins”

  1. It was also the anniversary (October 21st) of Kimi’s and Ferrari’s last Driver’s Championship.

    1. @mtlracer – now that is a neat stat 👍

  2. Not only Rai has won in three different motor eras, but has also won with 3 different teams and engine manufacturers. Not sure how many other drivers in the history have won with more than two teams. Surely there are some but not in the recent history.

    1. Edward Russell
      25th October 2018, 21:16

      Alonso

    2. The only recent ones I can think of are Prost, Vettel (but not three different engine manufacturers), Button (again, only two different engines), and as Edward said, Alonso.

    3. Τάσος Μπεκρης
      26th October 2018, 6:14

      Prost wins with Renault, McLaren, Ferrari, Williams.
      About engines wins with Renault turbo, TAG-Porsche, Honda turbo, Honda V12, Ferrari V12, Renault V10.
      Il proffesor..

    4. Stirling Moss won with five different constructors (Mercedes, Maserati, Vanwall, Cooper, and Lotus), more than any other driver.
      He also shares the record for wins with most different engine manufacturers (at four) with Fangio, Lauda, Berger, and Prost.

  3. It was also the longest interview Raikkonen ever gave ;)

  4. The race was the 7th time the US Grand Prix was held at COTA, Kimi’s driver number is also 7, quite strange.

  5. First time since 2008 that both Ferrari drivers have registered a victory in the same season.

    First time since 2013 Spanish Grand Prix in which neither of the anthems of erstwhile Prussia (Germany + Austria) was played out (a streak of 110 races).

    If Bottas fails to win any of the remaining races, it will be one of the rare occasions when a driver* of the WCC winning team has gone win-less. I checked from 1990 onwards and it had occurred just thrice before – 1990 (Berger), 2001 (Barrichello), 2013 (Webber).
    *1994 is a curious case here. The WCC winning team used 4 drivers across the season and 2 of them won races but the other 2 didn’t win. As more than 1 driver won, I am not counting it in the list.

    1. If Bottas fails to win any of the remaining races, it will be one of the rare occasions when a driver* of the WCC winning team has gone win-less

      Assuming of course that this year’s WCC will be Merc’s

  6. Both Jos and Max Verstappen have competed in F1 races won by Kimi Raikkonen.

    @paulgilb – ok, that one impressed me.

    1. Yes that is the best stat to visualise how long Kimi’s career is!
      @paulgilb
      @phylyp

  7. Τάσος Μπεκρης
    26th October 2018, 6:24

    Raikkonen became Ferrari driver with biggest gap between first and last win, Australia 2007 – USA 2018. Schumachers first was Spain 1996, last China 2006.

  8. Donald F. Draper
    27th October 2018, 2:24

    Always have liked reading these supplementary stats and facts. Even if they’re readily available, it’s nice to see on the same page, in a ‘the more information, the better’ kind of way. Thanks @jerejj

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