Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Yas Marina, 2019

Hamilton ends 2019 with a grand slam and three new records

2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix stats and facts

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Lewis Hamilton couldn’t have asked for much more from the final F1 race of 2019.

Yas Marina has always been a strong venue for Mercedes, and they dominated proceedings this weekend. Had it not been for Valtteri Bottas’s penalty they would have swept the front row of the grid, and from there a one-two finish would have been likely, given he was able to rise from 20th to fourth in a race which featured no Safety Cars or VSC.

As it was, Hamilton led every lap and added fastest lap to his pole position, giving him the sixth ‘grand slam’ of his career. Only Jim Clark, on eight, has more.

Hamilton set a new record for leading the most races in a single season. This might have seemed unlikely after he failed to lead a lap of the season-opened in Melbourne. But he’s led at least one lap of every race since, except at Monza.

He also broke the record he set last year for most points scored in a single season, raising it from 408 to 413. Of course this record is heavily influenced by the number of races in a season (a record-equalling 21 this year, a new record 22 on the 2020 F1 calendar) and the points system, which only began awarding 25 points for a win in 2010.

Michael Schumacher, Ferrari, Suzuka, 2002
Schumacher is the only other driver to score points in every race
This year drivers were also awarded a point for setting fastest lap. Hamilton took six of those bonuses, so without that he wouldn’t have set this new record.

And of course he took another step towards breaking one of F1’s biggest records. His 84th career win leaves him seven shy of Michael Schumacher’s tally.

Hamilton broke a third record by becoming the first F1 driver to score points in every race of a season twice. He did so this year and in 2017.

The only other driver to score in every race of a season was Schumacher in 2002 – and he managed then when points were only awarded to the top six.

[icon2019autocoursempu]Hamilton can break another record at the beginning of the 2020 F1 season. He scored points for the 33rd race in a row, equalling his own record from 2016-17. Astonishingly, had Hamilton not retired from last year’s Austrian Grand Prix with a fuel pressure problem, he would have scored points in every race of the past three years, a total of 67 races in a row.

Sunday was Hamilton’s 250th race start. He’s the ninth driver to reach this number, though Kimi Raikkonen is well ahead of him on 312, and should pass Rubens Barrichello’s all-time record of 322 next season.

Hamilton’s win and pole meant Mercedes did the double in Abu Dhabi for the sixth year in a row. Ferrari remain yet to win or take pole position at this venue. Hamilton’s 88th career pole position ended his nine-race streak without a pole – his longest since 2013 – and means he now has 20 poles more than any other driver in the history of the sport.

Max Verstappen ended the year third in the points standings, which is his highest ever finish. It’s also the best for a Honda-powered driver since Jenson Button’s third place for BAR-Honda 15 years ago. Fourth place for Charles Leclerc was his personal best, and the first time Sebastian Vettel’s finished behind by a team mate since Daniel Ricciardo beat him at Red Bull five years ago.

Jenson Button, BAR-Honda, Nurburgring, 2004
Button was the last Honda-powered driver to finish in the top three
A last-lap pass by Carlos Sainz Jnr secured sixth place in the championship for the McLaren driver. Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull drivers have occupied the top six in each of the previous three seasons.

The last team from outside these three to get a driver into the top six was Williams in 2015. In a shocking illustration in how rapidly their fortunes have changed, the team finished last for the second year in a row this season.

Robert Kubica ended his last race for the team without a point and Sainz’s last-lap lunge meant the same happened to Nico Hulkenberg on his swansong drive for Renault. Hulkenberg departs the sport with the unfortunate distinction of having started 177 races without ever finishing on the podium – the most of any driver in F1 history.

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Review the year so far in statistics here:

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

2019 Abu Dhabi 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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81 comments on “Hamilton ends 2019 with a grand slam and three new records”

  1. Jelle van der Meer (@)
    2nd December 2019, 13:02

    * Hamilton has scored the highest points total in a single season ever with 413 points breaking Vettel’s record of 397 points from 2013. However looking at average points per race it is only 5th best from last 10 years with 19.67 compared to Vettel 2013 score of 20.89 per race. This season was introduction of extra point for FLAP so looking at % of max it is only the 6th best from last decade with 75.64% versus Vettel 2013 record of 83.58%.
    * The 87 points gap to 2nd is the highest since 2013 season where the gap was a massive 155 points.
    * With 71.0% of points score by the top 5, it has been the most dominant since 2011 73.2% partly helped by a relative weak #2 at Red Bull. The German (46/81) and Braziliam GP (31/81) were the top 5 scored the least points. These were also the only 2 races where a Formula 1.5 car got on the podium.
    * Abu Dahbi is the 8th circuit where Hamilton achieved 5 or more wins
    * 3rd season is row with 5 different race winners – 2017 Raikonnen didn’t win, 2018 Bottas didn’t win and 2019 #2 Red Bull didn’t win. Last win of non top 3 team was Raikonnen in a Lotus in 2013
    * With the FLAP from Abu Dahbi Hamilton is now the sole leader of active drivers in FLAP’s with 47, Raikonnen is 2nd with 46. All time leader is still Schumacher with 77.
    * Hulkenberg leaves F1 after 179 races in which is scored 509 points (18th of all time) but sadly without a podium – he is the most experienced (races & points scored) driver without a podium. Interestingly he is replaced by the 2nd most point scorer without a podium Esteban Ocon (136 points).

    1. @jelle-van-der-meer – thanks for the points-per-race stat, I was hoping to see that info.

    2. The article mentions Hulkeberg had 177 starts, so I looked up what the discrepancy is. And naturally, there are two did not starts for him:
      – 2013 Australian GP, fuel problems before the start
      – 2015 Belgian GP, power unit issues, stalled on the grid, original start abandoned

    3. I actually thought Hamilton had over 400 points before now. Thanks for the stats.

      1. didn’t he have over 400 points last year

    4. Last win of non top 3 team was Raikonnen in a Lotus in 2013

      This is so sad…

  2. you mean ” Daniel Ricciardo beat him at *Red Bull* five years ago.” @keithcollantine

    1. might want to check also “Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull drivers have occupied the top six in each of the previous *?* seasons”

  3. Astonishingly, had Hamilton not retired from last year’s Austrian Grand Prix with a fuel pressure problem, he would have scored points in every race of the past three years, a total of 67 races in a row.

    This is why Hamilton is a 6-time world champion right here. That’s the kind of consistency Seb, Max and Valtteri can only dream of.

    No needless crashes into other cars, no spinning or putting it in the barrier for no reason, no over-driving and ending up having to make late tyre stops or limp home on low fuel, just delivering the absolute min/max needed, exactly when it’s needed.

    1. Or you could give Mercedes their rightful praise and say no driver ever had such a dominant yet almost flawlessly reliable F1 car. Attributing the result streak to Lewis is missing the point. Yes he’s done little wrong but he’s been Lucky when he did and was rarely challenged enough to really extract everything from the car.

      1. No needless crashes into other cars

        should probably say “No needless crashes into other cars since Brazil 2019” :P

      2. Does the car drive itself? How is this ever Mercedes’ credit?

        1. @gufdamm The car has broken down once in over 3 years. That is down to Mercedes.

      3. Erm, I literally made the point of listing potential “driver errors” to highlight the league he has been versus his competition – All well and good having a reliable car, but that doesn’t automatically remove human error.

        @coldfly

        Well, the championship was secured by then, so shhh! :p

      4. Or you could give Mercedes their rightful praise

        Certainly that is an important part, but how many other drivers on the grid could claim a 3 season long no DNF streak if their cars were 100% bullet proof? Bottas, No, Verstappen? No, Vettel? No, Ricciardo? No, Hulk? No Leclerc? No etc etc

        Attributing the result streak to Lewis is missing the point

        Attributing it solely to the car or team massively misses the point too.

      5. I was thinking on stats which might judge the dominance of the car vs the dominance of the driver.

        On the greatest drivers of previous generations, would the other driver in those team have figured
        as strongly, as Bottas figured in this year’s championship?

        Eg when shumcher was blazing a trail, did his co-drivers fair as well, did they come second by such
        a margin, or would team orders have favoured Shumacher to maximise his points and his championship wins.

        When Shumacher and other drivers won, would it automatically mean that car won the championship,
        and if so would it have been by the same margines as Mercedes has now won?

        My point is previous drivers may have been previlaged by team orders, to make sure where the win
        was possible, that they and they alone won. It seems to me, for Hamilton to get over 400 points
        and Bottas to fair as well as he did, it further illustrates Hamilton’s dominance as a driver. Or
        have it got this wrong. ;)

        1. Eg when shumcher was blazing a trail, did his co-drivers fair as well, did they come second by such
          a margin, or would team orders have favoured Shumacher to maximise his points and his championship wins.

          Yeah right. 1 big proof against your saying is Austria 2002. Irvine, Barrichello etc didn’t look anyway so docile as Bottas (it’s just a random example), but they really acted against their own team/bosses whenever they felt robbed. To say/imply that the drivers in the 2nd Ferrari were some muppets that Ferrari played at will to help Schumacher… is simply a big fat lie.

    2. @joeypropane to be fair he crashed and put it into the barrier in Germany this year. He was lucky not to get major damage, skilled to get the car out of the gravel and [your adjective here] to get into the pits from the wrong side of the bollard and not get a penalty.

      1. I’m pretty sure he got a time penalty for entering the pit from the wrong side on that incident.

        1. @yaru your memory is obviously much better than mine. You’re right, he got a 5 second time penalty.

    3. Very Prost-like! Who would have thought!

  4. Interesting fact I saw yesterday – Lewis is the first driver ever to start every race in a decade (Seb misses out because of Bahrain 2016 when his engine blew on the warmup lap, other close calls were Patrese who missed two starts in the 80s, one was mechanical fault, the other was San Marino 82, and Barrichello in the noughties who had two DNS in 2002 for Ferrari).

    1. Doesn’t the decade end a year later? Just as 31-12-1999 didn’t herald a new millennium, 31-12-2019 doesn’t end the decade. There was no “year 0”, so we can’t count a year ending in 0 as the epoch.

      Pedantry aside, very interesting stat, and one that he’s well on track to claiming in a year’s time :)

      1. Just as 31-12-1999 didn’t herald a new millennium

        Its kind of a meaningless argument but yeah it did, there were parties and everything.

        31-12-2019 doesn’t end the decade

        A decade is “Any period of ten years, including any arbitrary span of ten years” 2010 – 2019 inclusive is a decade e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s

        1. Thank you – something I learnt today, that the commonly accepted norm is to count 2010-2019 as a decade, while I’m apparently fussing about a more esoteric “ordinal decade“, which takes into account the absence of “year 0”, hence the ordinal decade is 2011-2020.

          1. The logical time to consider as a start of a decade IS 2000. 2010, 2020 eg. The same way a new calendar day starts at 00:00, this is the start of the first hour. So is 2020 the start of a new decade.
            Same with centuries. We’re living in the 21-st century but the year starts with 20 (as in 2019) not 21.
            And same with peoples age. When a baby reaches it’s date of birth after the first year, only then is it 1 year old. We start counting from 0. If you’ve been to school for more than 5 years you should know this.

          2. @Renee That’s a situation the calendar makers created when they decided the first year AD was 1 and not 0. The fist decade of the christian calendar, consequently, started at 1 AD and ended at 10 AD. The second decade started at 11 AD and ended at 20 AD and so on until our days. If the decade ends at a 9 and you count back to those days, the first ever decade had only 9 years and the definition of decade is 10 years. There’s no year zero on the calendar comparable to hour zero on the watch or age zero.

      2. This also annoys me. If a decade is now considered 00 – 09 then surely if we went from 1 BCE to 1CE then surely at some point we had a random 9 year decade which cant be. A decade starts at 01 to 10. The new millennium started 2001.

      3. @phylyp@martin generally also I wouldn’t base conclusions on a link from Wikipedia, in the following article it discusses with scientists when a decade is and they go by a modification to julian calender which is 01 to 10, new decade on 11. However the public tend to go by 0 to 9. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/11/28/us/what-is-decade.amp.html

  5. That grand slam stat – alongside his percentage wins out of races taken part in – shows what an incredible drive Clark was.

    Precisely where Hamilton fits in the pantheon will always be a matter of debate, but he is without a doubt the best of his generation, and somewhere in the top five of all time.

    1. I’d say Lewis is the best F1 driver in the last 40 – 50 years, not just his generation.

      1. Not to me he isn’t. In an era of lift and coast, conserve conse

        1. Oops hit send by mistake.

          Not to me he isn’t. In an era of lift and coast and conserve conserve conserve, with the engineers telling you how to drive the car to maximize the ridiculous tires, I do not feel like today’s drivers are performing the same great feats that drivers did in the past when much more of the driving and the decision making on the fly was up to them alone.

          1. While I could argue ‘we also do not know how much drivers of earlier era’s would have coped with so much need for direct interaction by the pit wall (w/o it, currently a driver would be distinctly disadvantaged), nor do we know that Hamilton (or Alonso, Vettel, Verstappen) wouldn’t have done equally well, or even better, in those times; But I do mostly agree that comparing across generations isn’t all that useful @robby; though I do note Hamilton was already good (but neither yet with the experience and consistency he has himself, nor in a team that had that consistency Mercedes is showing) before the current era, as shown by his 7 years before 2014 with wins in all of them.

            Nevertheless, Clark’s record continues to stand out, doesn’t it!

          2. Hm, I don’t think I’m going to post an edited version of the above, it clearly would have benefited from a bit more editing before hitting send, apologies.

          3. @robbie I’ll grant that you have a point there if you remove human performance out of your consideration.
            Looking at the car alone: today’s machines are ‘easier to drive’, safer and more reliable. I agree.
            But I think in F1, each era consists of drivers and teams that have to master their machine . . . and beat the competition. There in lies the equalizer – it is the same damn routine whatever the era. I’d even argue that the competition (at least from the driver’s perspective, if not the teams’) gets stronger as F1 ages.

          4. @robbie Utter nonsense again. Hamilton had most poles. That has nothing to do with Tyre preserving. That’s flat out racing at the very edge of what these cars can do.

          5. @f1osaurus Utter nonsense again. Suddenly to suit your argument you have boiled down the factor for what makes up the greats into how many poles they have? And on these tires they do indeed need lap by lap monitoring, where they can take the life out of them in less than one lap if they push too hard at the beginning of the lap. And that is not flat out racing anyway, even if the tires could handle it. That is racing the clock but is not racing others. I’m quite sure you know exactly what I mean about the amount of help drivers get from engineers to manage their races in the modern era vs the amount that was left up to the likes of Senna etc to figure out on their own while driving.

          6. @fiamd I agree that within each chapter in F1, each era, we can make apples to apples comparisons, but you opened it up as a discussion about the last 40 or 50 years, so I stand by my point. Drivers today are way more coddled. Have way more help. I’m not sure if much can be done about that in the new chapter unless they limit some of the radio comm, which I think they have talked about, but at least hopefully we’ll have more close battles without the crutch of drs for them to rely on.

          7. Drivers today are way more coddled

            Well drivers of yesteryear had it way easier, no having to switch brake biases and the like corner to corner and having to nail it otherwise you give up valuable time to your rivals. All Hunt had to do was think about driving, easy! And to boot his rivals weren’t getting help from their engineers mid race/qualy/whatever!

          8. @robbie

            Suddenly to suit your argument you have boiled down the factor for what makes up the greats into

            Yes you did that indeed. Man you are sad.

    2. %age wins out of races taken part in……… in 3rd place J Clark 34.25%, 4th place L Hamilton 33.60%. So every chance Ham may beat that next year. %age podiums Clark 43.84% Ham 60.40%

    3. The thing with Jim Clark is that his machines were not just dominant they were nearly unbeatable. Yes they were death traps that only he seemed to master quite well but once on song they were untouchable.

      1. @david-beau may I respectfully set the Clark record straight : )

        – After he won his first GP in ’62, Clark was never beaten by his team mate whilst he had a healthy car.
        – None of his team mates won a race in the Clark ‘winning’ era at Lotus, not even Graham Hill in ’67
        – He had 25 wins from 72 starts and only finished second once.
        – His grand slam count was 12% of his race starts.
        – He was leading the final race of the season in both ’62 and ’64 when his car let him down, losing him 2 further championships to add to his 2 from 7 full seasons
        – One of these 7 seasons was mainly contested in a 2L car against the new 3L Repco engines that eventually won that year. During this season (’66) he was the only driver to win with the heavy and unreliable H16 BRM engine in the back of his Lotus 43.
        – He also found time to win the British Saloon Car Championship in ’64
        – A one off foray in the ’66 RAC Rally saw three stage wins and running 6th overall before crash ended his rally

        Every era is different of course, but these stats take some beating.

        1. To me Jim Clark is second only to “el chueco” Juan Manuel Fangio

  6. Hanilton won the title with the fewest pole positions since Button in 2009. Underscores his skills in racecraft.

    1. …..also that this year Mercedes was better in race trim than Quali…. and that Ferrari cheated (as HAM would like to say) in order to get those PPs etc….

      It’s never too late to tell the whole truth.

      1. @mg1982 it’s funny how before you said that Mercedes had an advantage on Q3 because of their party mode. And that better race pace didn’t matter since they can control the race from the front.

        Amazing how when the roles are reserved you simply flip flop your illogical nonsense again.

        1. Well the majority of what MG posts is complete nonsense lol. Pretty sure MG stands for Mostly Garbage

        2. Me?! Try again, wasn’t me. Not this year, for sure! Still, is there something untrue that Mercedes had the best PU until 2018 started, party mode included?! I just tried to say that this year it wasn’t ONLY about HAM’s racecraft skills, but that this year Mercedes was particularly better in race trim rather than Quali. Also, I never sustained much the idea that Mercedes were unbeatable as long as they were in front, in clean air (just as I never bashed Honda as much as most members here, and I actually said right at the start of 2016 that McLaren’s chassis is just as bad as the PU; Renault switch confirmed my theory). Ferrari looked more vulnerable in dirty air than Mercedes all these years. Then, I tried to say that maybe Mercedes lost the party mode battle simply because Ferrari cheated…. as especially Mercedes and RBR (and their fans) say. I guess you watched the last few races and noticed Ferrari wasn’t the car to beat anymore, no? So, nothing illogical, you just need to read more carefully what I tried to say.

          1. @mg1982 Isn’t it true that 1+1=2? So I must be right then?

      2. Maybe if you remembered what you have previously wrote as well as we do you wouldn’t sound so stupid?

  7. Reading the tea leaves
    There are clear signs that 2019 was a strong, perhaps dominant, year for Lewis (and Mercedes): the total wins of 11 GPs and his usually ‘dominant’ tracks were won. Apart from 2018, Lewis has never won the WDC without winning in both China and Britain. He returned to that pattern in 2019.
    But there are equally clear signs that some things are slipping from the driver and his dynamic team. Qualifying is the biggest pointer. The telltale tracks are missing from his pole record for 2019. Again, apart from 2018, Lewis has never won the WDC in a year he has not secured the pole in both Australia and China. More troubling, his tally of five poles this year is the lowest he has had in any year he has been in contention for the WDC apart from 2010 (where he got a singular pole in Canada).
    2019 is also the year during the hybrid era in which Lewis has not won at least five GPs in the second half of the season (he won only four in 2016 and lost the WDC to Nico Roseberg). He won only three GPs after the summer break this year.
    My reading is that 2020 is going to be a very unusual year for Lewis and Mercedes. Are the chasing ‘barbarians’ knocking hard at Lewis’ wall or was Ferrari indeed fiddling with its engine?

    1. Kimberley Barrass
      2nd December 2019, 15:00

      His Pole record was not as good as some other years, but he was still the best qualifer of the field (average position 2.3 – Bottas next best with 3). His average position is better than he had last year (Germany being the pull-down statistic)

      Only Verstappen, Russell and Perez bettered his ‘teammate vs’ battle in qualifying – They were on 17,18,17 respectively, Lewis and Danny Ric were both on 13.

      His gap to Bottas (average) came down from -0.172 to -0.119s – about 5 tenths of a second over the past year, but hasn’t been particularly high since Bottas became his partner.

      He did however, regularly stonk Nico over a single lap…. – Which means the stats against Bottas stand out more.

      I’m predicting the same thing will happen again next year too. – He’ll out qualify Bottas. – though not by much, and I expect more poles from the two other teams, but over the year, Hams consistency will again play out. – He’ll beat Shu win record, draw his number of championships, and then I would say it is a coin flip on whether he ever beats that, but will set some ridiculous win and pole numbers before retiring to live in a house made of money!!!

      Good for him!!

    2. @fiamd I think there are signs, yes: Hamilton switched to focusing on race set-up and tyre preservation. This year he spent various races having to chase the lead driver for a win (Vettel, Verstappen, Bottas) or failing to do so (Leclerc at Monza). Clearly Hamilton’s pace is still there – witness the FLAPs he has set at the end of races, on worn tyres, sometimes even harder sets of tyres. For whatever reason, maybe growing maturity, maybe having a clear advantage in poll records already and chasing down Schumacher’s race wins and championships instead, maybe Bottas and Ferrari focusing on qualifying to try to beat him, his qualifying number has dropped. However, he said he wants to alter that next season – and Abu Dhabi was meant as a training for that.

  8. This is the first decade in f1 history in which either Ferrari or McLaren didn’t win a single title

    1. For Ferrari, that’s pretty mind-blowing indeed.

  9. Kimberley Barrass
    2nd December 2019, 15:04

    This is the first decade in F1 history when olny two constructors have taken the title between them.

    1. Sad… and looks set to continue next season

    2. And only three drivers and drivers from two countries.

    3. Technically, only two teams got constructors titles in the 50s, since only two years in the decade had a constructors championship.

      1. Kimberley Barrass
        3rd December 2019, 9:01

        True!! – I didn’t count the fifties, but you are technically correct. – The very best kind of correct! :D

  10. The BAR 006 was a very pretty car indeed.

  11. Charles Leclerc scored more points in 2019 than Kimi Räikkönen did in 2018.
    Kimi Räikkönen scored more points in 2019 than Charles Leclerc did in 2018.

    1. Jelle van der Meer (@)
      2nd December 2019, 17:35

      Nice one!!

      Making it more interestingly is that Raikonnen was 3rd in Championship in 2018 behind Vettel yet in 2019 with more points Leclerc is 4th ahead of Vettel.

      Both Ferrari (67 points) and Red Bull (2 points) scored less points in 2019 than they did in 2018 despite the extra race and extra points for FLAP.
      At Ferrari the blame lies fully at Vettel who has 80 points less while Leclerc scored 13 points more than Raikonnen.
      At Red Bull the blame lies fully at Gasly who scored 55 points less than Riccardio till Summer break while Albon scored 24 points more than Riccardio after the summer break and Max scored 29 more points than in 2018.

      1. That is an interesting summary. But more lashes for poor Gasly—I have to wonder whether Gasly will ever live down his days at RBR LOL. In terms of terrible substitutes in history, it’s not like he was Luca Badoer. Maybe because he was officially elevated, not put in provisionally, the expectations were too much, for him and for us. And it’s not like Albon has been right on Verstappen’s heels either. Gasly is an OK F1 driver, maybe even a pretty good one.

  12. This was the 244th race at which Lewis Hamilton did not win the World Drivers’ Title. This puts him four races from overtaking David Coulthard for 9th in this stat. Of current drivers Kimi Raikkonen holds the current longest streak of races where they did not win the world championship.

    1. Jelle van der Meer (@)
      2nd December 2019, 17:45

      Nicely found but you went wrong when you used “streak” indicating continuously while for Hamilton this is only the 2nd race he didn’t win the Championship and he is dead last of all active drivers as Hamilton most recently won it.

      Kimi Raikonnen indeed has longest streak of races without winning a new World Championship with 193 races closely followed by Perez 179 races, Riccardio 171 races and Grossjean with 165 races, Vettel’s streak is now 124 races..
      Only Hamilton and Vettel were racing in F1 when Kimi won his world champion in 2007 – both were rookies that year.

      1. I was referring to two separate but related stats – Raikkonen is both current driver streak-holder and current driver record-holder. Hamilton as you state has the current worst streak on the grid, though his mantle will be taken by Latifi come Melbourne.

        1. What on earth are you going on about?

  13. Is Hamilton the first driver to finish every lap in a season? I recall that Raikkonen and Hamilton were close in ’12 and ’17, but were a lap down in Brazil and Mexico.

    1. I think I’m mistaken – Schumacher finished every lap in 2002 as far as I can tell. Perhaps Hamilton is the first driver to finish within a minute of the leader in every race, which Schumacher failed to do in Malaysia ’02? (Hamilton was definitely within 30s in the four races he finished off the podium, Australia I think being his biggest margin to the winner).

      1. Upon further review, Italy was his biggest margin at about 35s

      2. Jelle van der Meer (@)
        2nd December 2019, 19:04

        Hamilton stats got saved multiple times in GP of Germany.

        For me MSC achievement in 2002 by getting 17 podiums (11x 1st, 5x 2nd and 1x 3rd) out of 17 raced is still unparralled even if he finished a minute down in Malaysia.

        With today points he would have scored 380 points in 17 races (22.35 per race) achieving 89.4% of maximum score.

  14. Of the 123 grand prix held in the turbo-hybrid era since the beginning of the 2014 season, Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes have:

    -Won 62 races (50.4% of the races held)
    -Delivered 57 pole positions (46.3%)
    -Achieved 33 fastest race laps (26.8%)
    -Completed 93 podium finishes (75.6%)

    There’s no doubt that a great driver needs a great car to deliver this level of long-term achievement. However, a great car can’t deliver this level of consistent success without a great driver in it.

    1. Congratulations on the most level headed comment I’ve ever read on here… COTD

  15. 19th GP this year in which Hamilton has led at least 1 lap (only exceptions were Australia and Italy). This is the greatest number of GPs led in 1 season, although Prost in 1993 (15/16), Vettel in 2013 (18/19), and Stewart in 1969 (11/11) had better percentages.

    Up to and including Austria, there was only 1 race (Monaco where Leclerc DNF’d) where the final top 5 in the championship did not finish as the top 5 in some order. After Austria, there were only 2 races (Singapore and Abu Dhabi) where the final top 5 in the championship all finished in the top 5 in the race.

    2nd consecutive race in which the driver starting last has crossed the finish line 4th.

    4th time in the last 5 seasons that Hamilton has managed 17 podiums.

    Due to his non-participation this season, 2019 is the first season since 2002 in which Fernando Alonso has not scored any points, thus leaving him 1 shy of Button’s 17 consecutive points-scoring seasons.

    Thanks to statsf1 for some of these.

  16. Now that he’s divorced maybe Bottas will be able to put all of his energy into beating Lewis next year. I’m surprised his ex didn’t know he was a Formula 1 driver and would be away from home a lot. Ahhh the mystery that is the female of our species.

  17. Truly impressive for HAM, but awesomely horrible for the sport to have become so one-dimensional.
    Didn’t watch a single race this year and didn’t even bother to check results more than once every few weeks.

    1. Then you missed some truly amazing races. Sucks for you.

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