Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Red Bull Ring, 2019

Six wins and no pole for Verstappen, two poles and no win for Leclerc

2019 Austrian Grand Prix stats and facts

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Are Mercedes doomed to never break McLaren’s record for most consecutive grand prix victories?

McLaren’s record streak of 11 wins in a row has stood since 1988. Mercedes has made it to 10-in-a-row three times, but yesterday they once again fell short. MP4/4 record is safe for now.

Depending on your point of view it was either fitting or ironic that a Honda-powered car should preserve that record achieved by a McLaren-Honda. Max Verstappen and Red Bull delivered the first victory for a Honda-powered car since Jenson Button won the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix.

This was the 73rd victory for a Honda-powered car and the fifth different chassis make to win with the Japanese engines. As well as powering their own cars to success Honda have also taken wins with Williams, Lotus and McLaren.

Verstappen’s second on the grid was also the first time a Honda-powered car had appeared on the front row since Button started from the same position at Imola in 2006. But while Verstappen increased his wins tally to six – drawing level with Tony Brooks, John Surtees, Jochen Rindt, Gilles Villeneuve, Jacques Laffite, Riccardo Patrese and Ralf Schumacher – remarkably he still doesn’t have a pole position to go along with it. No other driver in F1 history has won more than four races without taking pole.

That surely won’t last long. The same is no doubt true of Charles Leclerc’s feat of scoring two pole positions without winning a race. As it stands he is one of only five drivers to take more than one pole position without winning a race: the others being Chris Amon (five poles), Teo Fabi (three), Jean-Pierre Jarier (three) and Stuart Lewis-Evans (three).

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Most irritatingly for Leclerc he is win-less so far this season despite having led 124 laps this year, which is more than any driver apart from Lewis Hamilton. Verstappen has only led six: four yesterday and two in the season-opening round at Melbourne.

Antonio Giovinazzi, Alfa Romeo, Red Bull Ring, 2019
Giovinazzi: Italy’s 48th points-scorer
For the first time this year Hamilton didn’t feature on the podium and for second time this year there was no Mercedes on the front row of the grid. However Valtteri Bottas extended their run of podium finishes in every round this year.

Red Bull won their home race for their second year in a row. Verstappen currently doesn’t have a home race to win, but that will change as Zandvoort has been added to the 2020 F1 calendar.

Antonio Giovinazzi scored the first point of his F1 career with 10th place. He is the 48th driver from Italy to score a point. Only the USA (51) and Britain (60) have produced more points-scoring drivers; many of the Americans only scored points in the Indianapolis 500 when it was part of the world championship.

With Kimi Raikkonen ninth, Alfa Romeo achieved their first two-car points finish for 68 years. The last time two Alfa Romeo drivers scored points was at the 1951 Spanish Grand Prix, won for them by Juan Manuel Fangio in an Alfa 159, while Felice Bonetto came fifth.

Alfa Romeo left F1 after that race, then returned with its own team from 1979 to 1985. Although it never managed a double points finish under the rules at that time, when points were awarded to the top six finishers, it did manage more than one double top 10 finish which would score points under today’s rules. The last of those came at Monza in 1984, where Riccardo Patrese took third place and Eddie Cheever was classified ninth, six laps down, having run out of fuel.

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Review the year so far in statistics here:

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

2019 Austrian 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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39 comments on “Six wins and no pole for Verstappen, two poles and no win for Leclerc”

  1. Previous driver who was lapped by his race-winning team-mate was Nico Rosberg in Abu Dhabi 2014. That time Nico had hybrid system failure.

    1. This. I feel like this is not getting enough attention. Gasly is SEVERELY underperforming.

      1. @chrischrill

        He should be targeting 6th with Red Bull having 5th and 6th best cars.

        1. Red Bull have the overall 3rd best car. Please stop with this 5th & 6th car best nonsense.

          1. And that’s exactly what he implied @amam buddy.

          2. I think he’s implying that, if all the cars finished in the order of their theoretical potential for the season thus far on average, Red Bull would finish 5th and 6th rather than saying the Red Bull is the 5th or 6th quickest out of the 10 constructors.

          3. Third best car, two drivers per team = 5th and 6th best positions. Einstein.

          4. @amam Someone clearly misunderstood @bigjoe‘s commnt

          5. @geemac) I knew exactly what he meant. But all of a sudden, i see alot of (Dutch) fans are saying Max has the 5th best car. I been watching F1 for many years and have never seen another fan base call the 3rd best car on the grid, the 5th & 6th best. Max is doing well enough, he doesn’t need people trying to turn the 3rd best car into the 5th & 6th, to make him look better.

          6. @amam
            @jeffreyj

            I like @chrischrill ‘s terminology. The teams cars are not always identical. Saturday Leclerc’s Ferrari was the best car, Vettel’s was somewhere around 10th best.

            Similarly, it doesn’t convey the 2016 season to say Rosberg beat Hamilton in the same car. Rosberg won with the best car, and Hamilton finished second with the 2nd best car.

          7. For this race, I would argue that Red Bull had the best car. And that only makes Gasly’s performance (or lack thereof) that much more glaring. It’s not like it’s a case of Verstappen badly beating him occasionally. It’s a constant thrashing. I think we’re looking at the most one-sided matchup since Lewis had Kovalainen as a team mate–maybe even since Senna had Andretti as a team mate.

            Whatever promise Gasly showed in his junior career, it hasn’t translated to F1. At least not yet.

      2. In his defense.. Max car was equipped with some new aero parts. Next race these parts will be on GAS car .

    2. isaac (@invincibleisaac)
      1st July 2019, 12:10

      @bleu – Fernando Alonso also lapped Massa on his way to victory in Valencia 2012. Massa had been hit by Kobayshi so had some damage, but he was also very close to being lapped by Alonso in Malaysia for no obvious reason. Of course it’s all relative as Austria is the shortest track on the calendar for a lap time, but Gasly should at least be within a minute of his team-mate.

      1. I think Hamilton lapped Button Canada 2012

  2. Antonio Giovinazzi scored the first point of his F1 career with second place.

    Guys… :)

    1. isaac (@invincibleisaac)
      1st July 2019, 12:11

      @mattds – Good spot! Maybe the stewards added some more 5 sec time penalties that we didn’t know about ;)

  3. “Antonio Giovinazzi scored the first point of his F1 career with second place”

    Congratulations Gio on his first podium!!

  4. Most irritatingly for Leclerc he is win-less so far this season despite having led 124 laps this year, which is more than any driver apart from Lewis Hamilton. Verstappen has only led six: four yesterday and two in the season-opening round at Melbourne.

    Wow, this is the stat that really caught my eye.

    1. OmarRoncal - Go Seb!!! (@)
      1st July 2019, 21:41

      The most important lap to lead is the last one.

      1. Thanks for that sensei

  5. First non Renault, Ferrari, or Mercedes engine win since bmw in 2008 in Canada.

    1. @dmw You forgot a couple of Tag heuer wins

      1. @rethla The TAG-Heuer engines were really Renault though. They weren’t built by a watchmaker!
        @dmw ‘s stat is correct as far as I’m concerned.

  6. I’m glad Merc didn’t take the record from McLaren. Senna and Prost were F1 legends, a dream team that’s never been seen since. And although utterly dominant, it was a thing of pure raw beauty to see them destroy the field in those beastly cars and only have themselves to race.

    The pairing of Bottas and Ham is quite underwhelming, cruising around in these Cadillacs, it just has none of that magic.

    1. Jelle van der Meer (@)
      1st July 2019, 14:00

      I fully agree with you – Bottas is now driving 2,5 years for Mercedes – the best car of the field – yet he only won 5 races versus Hamilton 26 wins.
      Vettel won 10 races in next best car in the same period and now even Max won 5 in 3rd best car of the field.

      1. @jelle-van-der-meer)
        Vettel should have won far more races in 2017 & 2018. He was awful in 2018 especially, despite having arguably the best car.

        1. Panagiotis Papatheodorou (@panagiotism-papatheodorou)
          1st July 2019, 20:00

          I wouldn’t call Vettel awful in 2018, he was good but not good enough to beat Lewis.

          1. He was awful, he had a better car than 2017, did worse.

    2. I’d say Alonso and Hamilton is the best F1 partnership since Prost and Senna. And to me, I’d say there are quite a few similarities between them as well. When the partnership started, both Prost and Alonso were established as the driver to beat in F1, as double world champions. Senna and Hamilton came into the team as drivers who had no experience of a world title in F1 and immediately began putting the team leader under pressure. Although it was fairly clear that Hamilton/Senna was probably the ultimately quicker driver, they perhaps lacked the same level of consistency and driving composure as their more experienced teammates (at the time), which made it a very close contest. There was also a flashpoint between the teammates relating to orders from the team not being followed. Would have loved to see the Alonso vs. Hamilton battle continue for a few more years, but Alonso’s relationship with the McLaren hierarchy at the time basically made it impossible for him to stay.

  7. Since the heading for this topic compares Verstappen and Leclerc, I just wanted to post about what I thought was something interesting about the two drivers and their past together.

    I hadn’t watched the pre-race shows until many hours after the race itself, indeed until after I had re-watched the race last night as well. And of course there they were talking about them both starting on the front row and what that might look like and bring forth, but also about how they used to kart together ie. had a rivalry, and that of course reminded me of LH/NR. I hadn’t been thinking of that at the start of the race and then of course with Max faltering right away that ‘rivalry’ went out the window until the end.

    So when ‘the pass’ happened I still hadn’t been aware that they had a karting past, and now when I put that all together I can sure see why CL so desperately wanted back on track and steered into Max and can understand even moreso his bitterness on the podium. That must have really stung him and even though I am a big Max fan and absolutely loved his unforgettable race, I do feel for Leclerc as well. To have lost the race after leading so much of it is one thing, but to have lost it the way he did, and against Max of all people…well…even though he got a second place he must be considering it a dark day and it’s hard not to feel for the guy.

  8. I read on twitter that leclerc has led more laps without winning a race than anyone but chris amon.

  9. Verstappen first driver to win powered by a GP2 engine since 1953, when the World Championship was run to F2 regulations

  10. Just a small remark, Verstappen rightly sees Spa as a home race, as his mother is Belgian, and he grew up mostly in that country (and his father is from Limburg, closer to Spa than to Zandvoort too) ; Verstappen even remarked that winning in Zandvoort would be great for the fans, but at Spa would mean more to him, I think.

    1. Sounds like he is having an identity crisis to me.

  11. Honda have 3 of the 6 longest gaps between wins for an engine supplier (1967-1984, 1992-2006, 2006-2019) – thanks to statsf1.com for this one.

    Every season so far has seen Max Verstappen score as many front-row starts as victories.

  12. When was the last time neither Hamilton or Vettel weren’t on the podium?

    1. 2018 Chinese Grand Prix

  13. Mercedes has made it to 10-in-a-row three times

    Every time it’s ended by a Red Bull driver Spain 2016 by Max and Malaysia 2016 by Ricciardo. (Verstappen finishing second)
    Youngest podium?

    Funny fact posted on Twitter by @haydncobb:

    Maverick Vinales and Max Verstappen both won today (Dutch MotoGP & F1 Aut GP). Both last won on the same day, 28th October 2018 (Aus MotoGP & F1 Mex GP). Both have the initials MV

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