At the Australian Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc became only the 26th driver in the history of the sport to achieve a ‘grand slam’ of pole position, fastest lap and leading every lap on the way to victory.
At that point half of those drivers had achieved that rare feat more than once. But in the very next round at Imola Max Verstappen became the 14th to do so.Between them they are the first pair of drivers to score ‘grand slams’ in the same season since 1979. They were Gilles Villeneuve at Long Beach for Ferrari and Jacques Laffite at Interlagos for Ligier.
Verstappen grabbed the new maximum haul available for an F1 driver at the first time of asking, since the series increased the value of a sprint race win to eight points. He left Imola with an extra 34 points in his pocket – more than he’d scored over the opening three rounds combined.
Red Bull nearly did the same, but Leclerc split Verstappen and Sergio Perez on the sprint race rostrum, meaning the Milton Keynes squad trousered 58 of a possible 59 points.
Verstappen bagged the 22nd win of his career, putting him level with Damon Hill in 14th place on the all-time winners list. He now has 17 fastest laps, which puts him level with Rubens Barrichello.
While F1 has now declared that the driver who is quickest in Friday qualifying at sprint race weekends is considered the pole position winner, the fact remains pole for the grand prix is decided by the Saturday sprint race, as the regulations make inarguably clear. Fortunately, no one other than Verstappen can lay claim to having taken pole position by any measure last weekend. it was his 14th, giving him as many as Barrichello again, plus Alberto Ascari, James Hunt and Ronnie Peterson.
Perez followed Verstappen home in the grand prix, delivering Red Bull’s 18th one-two finish, and their first for six years, the last coming courtesy of Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo at Sepang in 2016. The other 16 were all scored by Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber between 2009 and 2013.
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Lando Norris scored his sixth pole position, somewhat unexpectedly given McLaren’s poor start to the season. He has finished on the podium in all of the last three F1 races to be held in Italy.
He was promoted by Leclerc’s late error, which also let George Russell in to finish fourth and move Valtteri Bottas up to fifth. That’s the best result for an Alfa Romeo driver since Kimi Raikkonen came fourth at Interlagos three years ago.
Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll picked up their first points of the season, and the first for Aston Martin. This means all 10 teams have now scored points, which did not happen in the previous two seasons. Mick Schumacher and Nicholas Latifi are the only full-season drivers yet to score points, and the latter is still ranked below Nico Hulkenberg who substituted for Vettel in the first two races of the year, and achieved a higher finish than the Williams driver during that time.
It was a grim weekend for Lewis Hamilton, who recorded one of the worst finishes of his career with 13th place. It’s been a long time since he finished that low down without some kind of outside factor being responsible.
He came 15th in Azerbaijan last year, though this followed an error at a standing restart which was given with two laps to go, prior to which he had been running third. He was classified 19th at Valencia in 2012 and 14th at the Circuit de Catalunya two years earlier, but on both occasions he was not running at the finish. Prior to that he was 18th in German in 2009, but there too he was compromised by a first-lap puncture.
You have to go back to the 2009 British Grand Prix for the last time Hamilton had a result as poor as that entirely down to car and driver performance. He finished 16th in McLaren’s MP4-23, a car he likened his current Mercedes to on Saturday evening.
If any driver was as downcast as him come Sunday evening, it was perhaps Carlos Sainz Jnr. He can’t have expected to do even worse at Imola than his second-lap retirement at Melbourne, but he did, dropping out on the first lap.
Who was the last driver to cover only one lap in two starts? It was actually four drivers: Bottas, Perez, Leclerc and Stroll, who were eliminated on the first lap at the Hungaroring last year and then, along with the entire field, covered only one lap in the farcical non-race at Spa later the same month.
Have you spotted any other interesting stats and facts from the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix? Share them in the comments.
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2022 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix
- Aston Martin’s first points reward “immense” effort by factory after Melbourne crashes
- Verstappen becomes 14th driver in F1 history to score more than one ‘grand slam’
- Transcript: “I need more power” – Hamilton and Russell’s contrasting fortunes at Imola
- Ferrari backs increase to six sprint races as F1 Commission meets in London
- Ocon blames pit equipment after penalty for near-miss with Hamilton in pits
Red Andy (@red-andy)
27th April 2022, 7:20
Is this the earliest in the season that every team has scored points?
F1 frog (@f1frog)
27th April 2022, 8:00
A stat to look out for here is that the record for most points scored by the team finishing last in the championship is 8, by Toro Rosso in 2009, and could be beaten this year. Although I doubt we will beat the current points system equivalent of Toro Rosso’s points that year, 28.5.
Red Andy (@red-andy)
27th April 2022, 8:39
@f1frog I think it would actually have been 29 points for Toro Rosso under the current system, because of the bizarre new rules for awarding partial points if a race is abandoned. So Bourdais would have picked up a point for 10th in Malaysia as between 50 and 75% of the race was completed, rather than half a point (as would have been the case up until last year).
Jere (@jerejj)
27th April 2022, 8:27
@red-andy Possibly or at least the earliest in a long time.
MattDS (@mattds)
27th April 2022, 16:27
@jerejj 2018 is not that long ago ;)
Oxnard (@montalvo)
27th April 2022, 13:53
It is just a nonsense stat though. These days we have less teams and welfare points. If we’d have had top 10 points in 1999, I believe all 11 teams would have scored points after the 3rd race, with only Sauber not scoring points after 2 races.
Mathias
28th April 2022, 11:11
With this system, massa in 2008 and alonso in 2010 and 2012 would have won with ferrari. What could have been huh…
G
28th April 2022, 12:57
It was especially hard on Massa in 08. Not only with crashgate, but with the points system changing the following year which would have made him champion had they been introduced in 08 instead.
MattDS (@mattds)
27th April 2022, 16:27
@red-andy in 2018 it was also after 4 races.
Around 2000 we had a few years where we would’ve had all teams scoring points after only 3 races, if current points system would have applied.
In 1968, all of the full-time teams (meaning those that participated the entire season) had scored points after only 2 races.
It’s a difficult stat due to the variance in number of points paying positions, reliability, and in the first decades teams that would only participate in some races.
jff
27th April 2022, 7:24
*podium finish
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
27th April 2022, 11:15
I was already confused by what constitutes ‘qualifying’ before reading that. Had me puzzled for a second.
Qeki (@qeki)
28th April 2022, 6:41
@keithcollantine
Jere (@jerejj)
27th April 2022, 7:53
The first time neither Mercedes reached Q3 in 187 events since the 2012 Japanese GP.
Haas best-ever QLF finishing position.
The first time a qualifying session had five stoppages since 2006 when the fundamentally same three-phase knockout format debuted.
Leclerc’s FLAP bonus point streak ended.
Pre-Emilia Romagna GP, he’d been the only driver collecting these points this season.
The same two are now the only ones with race wins & FLAPs collected.
Norris, additionally, became the 7th different podium driver alongside RBRs, Ferraris, & Mercs.
RBR & Ferrari now have two 1-2s apiece, which is more than in the entire last season when only a non-top team got a 1-2.
The last time Hamilton got lapped happened coincidently on the same track twelve months ago, although this time he also finished lapped.
He also got lapped in the 2017 Mexican GP, albeit via an unforced error & unfortunate puncture with consequent floor damage, respectively, rather than on pace.
Another coincidence is the same driver winning all three races.
Bottas, in his Mercedes stint, got lapped in 2017 Azerbaijan & 2018 Mexican GPs, so the Brackley team getting lapped for any reason has been extremely rare in the hybrid era.
Ocon’s first point-less race in this season.
BTW, the last one is confusing. ‘covering one lap in two starts’ I can’t get my head around this.
Jeanrien (@jeanrien)
27th April 2022, 8:02
@jerejj Sainz crashed on lap one, completing none. And crashed on lap two of previous race, completing one. I imagine Sprint race is not counted as a start in this case which is another topic alongside FLAP for statisticians.
F1 frog (@f1frog)
27th April 2022, 8:02
Unless I’m very much mistaken, Kevin Magnussen’s fourth in qualifying was the best ever for Haas (negated by the sprint of course), and his best since Germany 2014.
Jere (@jerejj)
27th April 2022, 8:26
@f1frog True both.
asz
27th April 2022, 8:29
Some competition the Romans organized, perhaps?
banana88x (@banana88x)
27th April 2022, 10:39
I remember the Germania Grand Prix of 200 quite well.
Hamilton was dominant that year but at this race he suffered a mechanical failure (one of his horses got sick the night before).
The Roman Emperor was putting all his bets on Hamilton that day and went insane after the race.
He could only be calmed by an extra event in the Colloseum displaying a fight between several slaves and wild lions.
Crazy times!
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
27th April 2022, 11:23
@banana88x Crazy times indeed, place was full of Goths and Vandals.
José Lopes da Silva
27th April 2022, 22:30
And no Britanni teams in there?
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
27th April 2022, 9:47
First time Hamilton has gone an entire 3 races without being on the podium in the Hybrid era.
In 2013 he went the last 8 races (Italy to Brazil) without a podium, but then the engine formula changed, and we all know how that went!
GeeMac (@geemac)
27th April 2022, 10:17
Williams record of the most points scored in a single Grand Prix (66 for 2nd and 3rd in the 2014 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix) will be safe for a while then.
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
27th April 2022, 11:25
@geemac If we all believe Bernie’s idea never happened, then eventually it never happened. Least I’m hoping.
Jazz (@jazz)
27th April 2022, 10:58
Jos Verstappen once had a grand slam, wasn’t on an F1 circuit though.
Steve
27th April 2022, 11:28
😆👍👏👏
Billy
27th April 2022, 11:01
Who cares! I find Jos Verstappens wife beating record more fascinating tbh.
Noframingplease (@)
27th April 2022, 17:01
@billy of course that’s why ‘racefans’ can better be renamed in ‘lewishamiltonfanclub’.
Alonso (@alonshow)
27th April 2022, 11:35
In spite of his appalling weekend Hamilton beat yet another Schumacher record: most race entries with a single constructor. 181 for Schumacher (Ferrari), 182 for Hamilton (Mercedes).
Fezza (@fezza)
27th April 2022, 14:30
He’ll never beat Schumacher’s most important achievement of 7 WDC titles.
senproman
27th April 2022, 11:38
Hate to say it, but… Double Points?
Pat
27th April 2022, 13:47
It’s also the first time in the history of the sport that two drivers from two different teams scored back to back grand slams.
Simon
28th April 2022, 0:07
Oh, double points. Ugh…
Simon
28th April 2022, 0:09
Apologies – meant to be a reply for senproman
(Browser acting up)
SuperIU
27th April 2022, 16:27
I don’t know if this ever happened, but 8 of 10 teams scored points in this race. Two teams have both cars in the points (Red Bull and Aston Martin) and two teams doesn’t (Williams and Alpine).
And also, by these stage of the championship, only two drivers or the grid are still pointless: Schumacher and Latifi (excluding Hulkenberg). The other 18 drivers has points (16 of them already has the race before)
MattDS (@mattds)
27th April 2022, 16:34
Yes, it happened, I remember it well. It was two weeks ago in Australia. ;)
SuperIU
27th April 2022, 16:45
I don’t check that… now is twice in a season, and I don’t know if this ever happened. :)
stefano (@alfa145)
27th April 2022, 22:21
you mean “podium” @keithcollantine