Two British drivers on the podium for the first time in nine years

2021 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix stats and facts

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Sunday’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix was the first time in nine years that two British drivers had appeared on the podium.

But, just as was the case the last time it happened, neither of them won the race.

Max Verstappen’s victory at Imola was the 11th of his career. He’s now won as many races as Jacques Villeneuve, Rubens Barrichello and Felipe Massa

There were a couple of neat historical symmetries here. He gave Honda their first victory at Imola since Ayrton Senna 30 years earlier, and did it by bursting into the lead from third on the grid, exactly as Ralf Schumacher did in the same race 20 years ago.

Lewis Hamilton took second, which was remarkable, as he’d fallen a lap behind at one stage. He moved into the place with four laps to go by passing Lando Norris, who took third place and the second podium finish of his career.

Verstappen equalled 1997 champion Villeneuve’s wins haul
This was therefore the first time two British drivers were classified in the top three since Hamilton and then-McLaren-team mate Jenson Button followed Nico Rosberg home in the 2012 Chinese Grand Prix.

That occasion was the 552nd and 553rd podium appearances by British drivers. Hamilton and Norris pushed the total up to 700 on Sunday. Norris’s podiums were two of only seven scored by drivers other than Hamilton during that time: The rest were taken by Button.

Hamilton set pole position for the 99th time in his career on Saturday. This, astute mathematicians will note, means he can reach a century at the next race in Portugal, where he broke Michael Schumacher’s record for most grand prix wins last year. Hamilton has now taken pole in 15 consecutive seasons (he already held the record) and at 30 different tracks (ditto).

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He also set the fastest lap of the race, for the 54th time in his career. Schumacher is still far and away the benchmark here: He racked up 77.

Alonso claimed a point after pre-race excursion
Speaking of 77, Valtteri Bottas’s retirement meant that Mercedes were unusually out-scored by three of their rivals at Imola. Hamilton’s fastest lap bonus meant they came away with 19 points to Red Bull’s 25, McLaren’s 23 and Ferrari’s 22.

After the first two races, two teams have scored points with both cars in each – McLaren and Ferrari – but neither of those have won races. Three teams are yet to score at all: Williams, Haas and Alfa Romeo.

The latter lost their first points score of the season yesterday when Kimi Raikkonen was given a 10-second stop-go penalty (converted post-race into a 30-second time penalty). Vettel was given the same penalty, as Aston Martin did not fit his tyres to the car before the five-minute signal.

The 10-second stop-go penalty is not frequently issued. Last year it only appeared at Monza, where the stewards handed it to Hamilton and Antonio Giovinazzi. Prior to that its last appearance had also been at Monza where, coincidentally, the two recipients were Raikkonen and Vettel. In fact, Raikkonen has received this penalty in four of the last 13 occasions it was issued.

The post-race penalties also meant Fernando Alonso scored his first point since he returned to F1. His last points finish was seventh place at the 2018 Singapore Grand Prix.

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

2021 Emilia-Romagna 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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47 comments on “Two British drivers on the podium for the first time in nine years”

  1. Jelle van der Meer (@)
    19th April 2021, 16:47

    With his 11th race win Max is the 11th driver to win at least 1 race in 6 consecutive seasons.

    The first was Stirling Moss when winning his 13th race at the Monaco Grand Prix on 29th of May 1960 in his 10th F1 season at age 30yrs & 254 days.
    With the least seasons was Hamilton winning his 18th race at the Canada Grand Prix on 12th of June 2021 in his 6th F1 season at age 27yrs & 155 days.
    The youngest was Max with 23 years and 200 days in his 7th F1 season beating Vettel by 2yrs & 64 days.
    The oldest was Jackie Stewart winning his 23rd race at the South Africa Grand Prix on 3rd of March 1973 in his 9th and final F1 season at age 33yrs & 265 days.

    The other 7 with at least 6 consecutive seasons wins are (season, age & wins when achieved and # consecutive seasons wins achieved):
    Schumacher (7th, age 28, 23rd win & 15 seasons)
    Vettel (7th, age 25, 27th win & 6 seasons)
    Prost (7th, age 31, 22nd win & 10 seasons)
    Senna (7th, age 29, 21st win & 9 seasons)
    Clark (8th, age 31, 21st win & 7 seasons)
    Piquet (8th, age 32, 13th win & 8 seasons)
    Coulthard (9th, age 31, 12th win & 7 seasons)

    Looking at all drivers with more 20 or more races the following didn’t get to 6 consecutive season wins (# consecutive seasons wins achieved):
    Alonso (4), Mansell (4), Lauda (5), Rosberg (5), Fangio (5), Damon Hill (4), Raikkonen (3) and Hakkinen (5) all won 20 of more races but not in 6 consecutive seasons.

    1. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
      19th April 2021, 19:36

      @jelle-van-der-meer Excellent stats.

      Some exceptional company for Verstappen. Once you include the ones who didn’t achieve it, it’s a veritable creme-de-la-creme in F1.

      1. Indeed, there’s more big names than small in those lists.

  2. Qualifying was the first time since Malaysia 2012 that the top eight were all within half a second of each other. On that occasion, it was the drivers who qualified ninth and tenth who finished first and second in the race.

    1. And in Q2 the whole top 15 was within 0.877s.

  3. Leclerc, Gasly, Ricciardo, Norris, and Stroll have this season thus far, only started from P4, P5, P6, P7, and P10, respectively. In Imola, the rookie trio started at the back.

    Seb’s and Mick’s finishing positions were the same as in Bahrain, albeit the former technically DNFd, but got classified because of the 90% rule.

    Giovinazzi was the only driver besides the Haas duo (+2 laps) who didn’t finish on the lead lap. Out of the drivers finishing both races, he’s the only one besides Mick, who hasn’t stayed on the lead lap until the end.

    Russell has DNFd twice in Imola in as many races.

    Two pit lane starts so far, one in each race.

    Max, before this win, had never finished in the top-four in Italy on any circuit.

    Red Bull’s best previous result in Imola was Vitantonio Liuzzi’s 8th place in the team’s debut season.

    Hamilton retained his record of having never won the opening two rounds of any season in F1.

    McLaren’s 4th podium finish in the last seven years.

    1. “Hamilton retained his record of having never won the opening two rounds of any season in F1.”

      This statement is inaccurate. Not only did he win the opening round of the championship this year, he also won in either of the first two rounds of 2008 (Australia), 2014 (Malaysia), 2015 (Australia), 2017 (China), 2019 (Bahrain), and 2020 (Styria).

      1. It means that he has never won both of the first two races in a season.

      2. He was talking about two consecutive race wins. Even in 2019 when Lewis won 6 out of the first 8 rounds he did not win round one and two.

      3. @kevincucamest You misinterpreted the phrase. Opening ‘two’ rounds.

        1. Oops! Yes I did, sorry about that!

      4. Interesting enough, I also hold this same record as hamilton

  4. It is not so clear about those podium numbers. In order for this to be 700th GB podium, one needs to accept that the Brooks/Moss win in GB57 represents TWO podiums for Britain…a leap of faith too far for me. In fact, if one would subscribe to a theory that there could be no more than 3111 podiums (3x the 1037 world championship races) then this was GB podium number 696.

    1. But what would we do with a Fangio-Collins podium then?
      Using the same reasoning, we cannot give it to both nations.
      Do we do 0.5 each then?

  5. Not sure if there was any ‘record’ but I did notice in qualifying that 7 different teams actually made it to Q3 (Red Bull, Merc, Ferrari, Alpine, Aston Martin, Alpha Tauri, McLaren), can’t recall when the last time that happened was. Maybe someone else can research!

    1. Oh wait, it was the previous race in Bahrain, doh!

      1. I don’t think seven different teams is particularly unusual, but more than that is, so I will have a look for any cases of eight or more teams in Q3. Abu Dhabi 2012 is one instance, I think.

    2. @t1redmonkey okay, here are all the races since the system began in 2006 when 8 different teams have been in Q3:
      Germany 2019 (Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Renault, Racing Point, Alfa Romeo, Haas)
      Italy 2018 (Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, Renault, Haas, Force India, Toro Rosso, Williams)
      USA 2013 (Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari, Lotus, McLaren, Sauber, Toro Rosso, Williams)
      Bahrain 2012 (Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, Lotus, Mercedes, Sauber, Force India, Toro Rosso)
      Japan 2009 (Brawn, Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari, Toyota, BMW, Force India, Toro Rosso)
      China 2009 (Brawn, Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari, Toyota, Williams, Renault, Toro Rosso)
      Italy 2008 (Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, Renault, Toyota, Toro Rosso, Red Bull, Williams)
      Australia 2008 (Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, Toyota, Toro Rosso, Red Bull, Williams, Honda)

      And there has only been one instance where nine different teams all made it to Q3:
      Brazil 2009 (Brawn, Red Bull, Ferrari, Toyota, BMW, Williams, Renault, Force India, Toro Rosso)

      1. That’s also an interesting one, the 5 years gap is striking between 2 of those occurances, it basically says that once the hydrid era started (2014) there’s not been a lot of competition any more, and it came back shortly in the most competitive year of that era so far, the one where mercedes took 4 races to win a race.

      2. Thank you, very interesting.

  6. Maybe it’s because I’m from the US, but it never really occurs to me what country a driver is from until they play the anthem.

    1. I agree entirely. F1 is about the driver and the machine and not nationalities. Countries and tribal concerns are out of the picture until forced back in by broadcasters.

    2. F1 is indeed the most international of sports. That is one of it’s strengths, for sure.

  7. This was the first (in-race) Red Flag at Imola since 1994

    1. That’s a poignant stat. This one also due to a crash at Tamburello.

  8. This was therefore the first time two British drivers were classified in the top three since Hamilton and then-McLaren-team mate Jenson Button followed Nico Rosberg home in the 2012 Chinese Grand Prix.
    That occasion was the 552nd and 553rd podium appearances by British drivers. Hamilton and Norris pushed the total up to 700 on Sunday. Norris’s podiums were two of only seven scored by drivers other than Hamilton during that time: The rest were taken by Button.

    These are some nice statistics for the British fans; let’s complement it for the Dutch fans:
    This was the 46th time a Dutch driver was classified in the top three since Verstappen followed Lewis Hamilton home in the 2021 Bahrain Grand Prix.
    That occasion was the 45th podium appearance by a Dutch driver. Verstappen pushed the total up to 46 on Sunday. Max’s podiums were 44 of the 46 scored by Dutch drivers: The rest were taken by his father.

    1. Amazing that the Verstappen family account for 100% of Dutch podiums, I can’t think of any other countries who have all their podiums scored by one family.

      1. Juan Pablo Montoya scored all the podiums for Colombia, Robert Kubica for Poland, John Love for South Rhodesia, Kevin Magnussen for Denmark, Tiago Monteiro for Portugal and Pastor Maldonado for Venezuela. Obviously these are all only one driver, but technically their families have all the podiums for their country. In terms of examples with more than one in the family, I think the Verstappens are the only ones, although the Villeneuves had all the podiums for Canada until Lance Stroll.

    2. Jos still holds the record for best Dutch finishing position at Monza (4th).

      1. Interesting to know that Jos was the best Verstappen in Italy.

        1. Yes, stuff always seems to happen to max verstappen in monza, example in 2017, a year where he was generally faster than ricciardo but less lucky, they both started very far back on the grid despite good qualifying performance due to replacing some parts, verstappen 13th, ricciardo 17th I believe, and verstappen recovered much faster to 7th or 8th, then got some puncture with a daring overtaking attempt on massa, that’s what put a stop to his podium chances, which were very high I believe, since ricciardo himself ended up hounding vettel for 3rd place. Verstappen actually got very close to a podium in 2018 I believe, fighting with bottas, ending 3rd on track but getting a penalty for over-defensive moves, and there was ofc the very bad race in monza 2020, where he dropped back soon as well as bottas, not taking the chance given by hamilton’s pit lane mistake.

  9. McLaren’s racing coveralls now have 50% less orange strips on the side, so Norris looks 90% less like a clown than last season.

  10. How often was the pole time a palindrome? 1:14.411

    1. warning: this comment is not suited for people who suffer from Aibohphobia !
      Wow, on my radar the level of palindromes for a racecar at this level is around 1/1000 races; so about 1 or 2.
      Not sure when F1 moved away from 1/100s or the 1/10s of the stopwatches. In those days it was more common.
      Also if counting in seconds it would happen up to 10x more often.
      @marcusaurelius

    2. And what about race number II with 44 and 11 on the front row?

      1. @coldfly, @marcusaurelius good stuff!

        I think at this point it is good to add that as far as I can see, nr. 44,Hamilton leads the championship at 44 points. Thoughggood forthe championship,I am now slightly sad Verstappen is not at 33 ;)

    3. That should be an interesting statistic! I did some research and I believe Pole time has been a palindrome on only 16 occasions (since we have times with thousands of seconds):

      1981 British Grand Prix 1:13.311 gilles_villeneuve
      1982 German Grand Prix 1:59.951 keegan
      1983 Dutch Grand Prix 1:16.611 prost
      1989 Monaco Grand Prix 1:27.721 moreno
      1992 Italian Grand Prix 1:22.221 mansell
      1994 French Grand Prix 1:18.811 comas
      1998 German Grand Prix 1:43.341 wurz
      2000 German Grand Prix 1:48.841 ralf_schumacher
      2002 Australian Grand Prix 1:53.351 sato
      2002 Austrian Grand Prix 1:09.901 fisichella
      2003 Spanish Grand Prix 1:18.811 panis
      2004 British Grand Prix 1:18.811 alonso
      2004 Brazilian Grand Prix 1:12.211 klien
      2012 Canadian Grand Prix 1:14.411 rosberg
      2016 Austrian Grand Prix 1:09.901 raikkonen
      2021 Emilia Romagna GP 1:14.411 hamilton

      1. Oops, correction! The above palindromes are for all Q3 times, not only pole positions. The times that were actual pole positions are only two:

        1992 Italian Grand Prix 1:22.221 mansell
        2021 Emilia Romagna GP 1:14.411 hamilton

        1. Great work, @miguelbento.
          And as mentioned above it is in line with expectations, also that all Q3 times should roughly be a tenfold.

          One of the reasons I like this site is the quality contributions from other readers; be it statistics (like here), opinions, or just having a laugh..

        2. Yes, great work @miguelbento, but I am intrigued as to how you found this stat. I am guessing you did not look back through old qualifying results, but I cannot think of what you could have done instead.

          1. Hi @f1frog, thanks. I use the great Ergast Developer API website. I have a local copy of the database in my laptop and do my more complex queries on it. The Ergast website has qualifying data from 2003 onwards only, but I updated my local DB with the qualifying results going back to 1962 I think (and yes, I did it manually :-), copying from the F1 website, Wikipedia and other sources for cross checking). I am still double checking everything and will send the data to the Ergast owner when it’s ready. It’s a lot of work because I have to insert also the driver (of course) and the team data in the qualifying table. But I somehow find this rewarding… ;-)

  11. Hamilton is the only driver so far this season to have secured a win, a pole, and a fastest lap.

    Nikita Mazepin still has a mathematical chance of becoming World Champion this year.

    :-)

  12. 30th different track at which Hamilton has taken pole – next best is Vettel with 23. The only tracks at which Hamilton has raced but never taken pole are Istanbul, Magny-Cours, and New Delhi.

    Tsunoda hit the wall at Variante Alta 20 years and 2 days after Alonso did likewise driving for AlphaTauri’s predecessor Minardi in his debut season.

    Only tracks where Verstappen has raced but not finished on the podium: Baku, Istanbul, Monaco, Monza, and Mugello.

    2nd year in a row that Raikkonen has finished 9th on the track at Imola.

    At Imola, both Red Bulls were classified in the position that they started the previous race in Bahrain.

    The Alpine drivers have scored exactly 1900 and 200 points in their F1 careers.

    2nd consecutive race in which Schumacher has started 18th and finished 16th, and Mazepin has started 19th and spun during the race.

    2nd time (after Monaco 2004) that M Schumacher has spun and hit the wall behind a safety car.

    Latifi’s best start to date (same is true for Perez).

    12th consecutive season in which Hamilton has managed at least 1 fastest lap.

    19th consecutive season in which at least 1 Mercedes-powered car has managed a pole position.

    Thanks to statsf1 and the official F1 site for some of these.

    1. At least monaco 2004 was not a self-made spin!

  13. First time since 2015 that Mercedes have lost a race right after winning for the first time in the season.

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