In Canada, Mercedes showed the clearest sign yet of becoming regular victory contenders for the first time under the current rules.
That can’t come soon enough for Lewis Hamilton, who has already smashed his own longest win-less streak. His dearth of success also has another measure – this is the longest he’s ever gone without even leading a lap of a race.His team mate George Russell became the sixth different driver to lead a race this year as he headed the field for 20 laps on Sunday – more than he managed in the whole of last season. But Hamilton has yet to do so.
Hamilton last led a grand prix 13 rounds ago, at the Circuit of the Americas. This is the longest run he’s ever spent without leading a race – a measure which looks even worse when you consider he was disqualified from the last race he led.
Verstappen led and won again on Sunday, racking up his 60th win. Since his first victory in the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix he and Hamilton have won the same number of races, though the Mercedes driver has taken none during the course of Verstappen’s last 41.
Russell took the third pole position of his career, having previously started there at the 2022 Hungarian and Brazilian grands prix. According to F1, this was his second pole position, as the series officially considers Kevin Magnussen the pole winner of the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix. Russell started that race from pole position, while Magnussen took pole for the sprint race.
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Three drivers on the grid now have three pole positions – Russell, Daniel Ricciardo and Sergio Perez. Jose Froilan Gonzalez, Tony Brooks, Dan Gurney, Jean-Pierre Jarier, Jody Scheckter, Elio de Angelis and Teo Fabi also recorded three during their careers.
In another sign of Mercedes’ gains, the team set the fastest lap for the third race in a row. Hamilton did so on this occasion, as he did in Monaco, thereby setting fastest lap in back-to-back races for the first time since 2020. He is now 10 away from matching Michael Schumacher’s all-time record of 77 fastest laps.
It was a terrible weekend for Ferrari, who failed to get either of their drivers into Q3, which hasn’t happened since the 2021 Austrian Grand Prix. Both retired from the race, resulting in Ferrari’s first no-score since Australia last year, 27 rounds ago.
That opened the door for others to capitalise. Aston Martin and Alpine duly did so, each claiming their largest points hauls of the year of 14 and three respectively.
Seventh place for Lance Stroll was his best result in the Canadian Grand Prix. F1 heaped praise on this, proclaiming “Stroll breaks Villeneuve record.” The ‘record’ was for most points-scoring finishes in the Canadian Grand Prix by a Canadian driver, which Stroll did take from the late Gilles Villeneuve.
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But it’s hardly a representative basis for comparison. First, under the scoring system which was in use throughout Villeneuve’s career, Stroll would still be point-less at his home event. Stroll’s home results are a seventh, three ninths, 10th and a retirement in a first-lap collision. Villeneuve retired from his first home race then stood on each step of the podium and added a fifth place. His fifth appearance at home in 1981 was his last before his untimely death, following which Montreal’s circuit was renamed after him.
Over to you
Have you spotted any other interesting stats and facts from the Canadian Grand Prix? Share them in the comments.
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2024 Canadian Grand Prix
- “He needs to be more careful”: Unheard radio messages from the Canadian Grand Prix
- Marko contradicts stewards’ reason for Red Bull and Perez penalties
- Only one F1 championship looks like a worthwhile fight in 2024
- Red Bull can fix kerb-riding without losing RB20’s major strengths – Verstappen
- Mercedes suspect Montreal track layout ‘made us look quicker’
Coventry Climax
12th June 2024, 13:29
Ah, statistics.
If I remember correctly, it was Lee Wallard who only competed once and won the race, back when the Indianapolis 500 was on the calendar.
That’s a perfect score of 100%, never to be beaten again. Therefor GOAT, by some people’s books.
José Lopes da Silva
12th June 2024, 13:53
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
12th June 2024, 17:52
ratios are not statistics.
Jockey Ewing
13th June 2024, 1:28
Depends of how free spirit someone is. Most likely the despisal towards the word statistics is rooted in the intentional misuse of them with malign intentions, and of course that happened many times, by politicians, any by many other kind of selfish and greedy people. Meanwhile at theoretical maths one can play with the intention of inventing, at worst what one creates will never be useful, or even understood, but there is a good chance that it will never do any harm either.
What is the point of creating statitics, or gathering data, if someone does not try to interpret them in one or multiple ways, for example to create something meaningful, to draw new conclusions, to change the world or to have fun? Tables of numeric values are not really amazing without a motivation other than staring at them.
So if the collection of the numerators and the collection of the denominators are already considered to be two samples of statistics, why the collection of the rational numbers composed from those numerator and denominator pairs is not a stat?
Moi
13th June 2024, 7:23
A winratio expresses the relationship between two statistics, races and wins. It is therefore, in itself, also a statistic.
Jockey Ewing
13th June 2024, 0:20
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size
José Lopes da Silva
12th June 2024, 14:02
F1 heaping raise on Stroll beating Gilles’ points at Montreal is inspiring me to write something that would get my comment moderated and, eventually, blocked. Ofc it’s @keithcollantine job to put things straight.
F1 comparisons across decades and eras is always better by doing percentages and, ideally, taking each season as the basic unit of measurement. It’s interesting to analyse, for instance, how many seasons did the winning drivers accomplish to win at least 15% or 20% of each season – it’s a solid measure for success.
Jockey Ewing
13th June 2024, 0:44
I would say, the comparison between the aforementioned stat of Gilles Villeneuve and Lance Stroll is quite irrelevant, too much changed since then (like much longer seasons, much longer driver careers, much more reliable and consistent cars, more placements awarding points, etc.), maybe if I would need to categorize it, I would put it into the “L’art pour l’art stat” bracket.
Jockey Ewing
13th June 2024, 0:52
And for even worse, only considering the home races’ results of particular drivers reduces the sample size to “quite small”.
Especially if the home country of said drivers have not produced too many F1 drivers, or they have not had long careers.
Nick T.
13th June 2024, 11:03
Extending points positions to 8th and then 10th was good, but they instantly rendered career points tallies mostly meaningless when they needless made each position worth many points. At the very least, when they show historical points tallies, they should have a side-by-side totals showing how many points x, y or z would have under the new and old points systems.
The records should also focus on points per race since reliability and season length has also made comparing drivers from different eras or drivers whose careers began under the old systems even more meaningless.
notagrumpyfan
12th June 2024, 14:12
Hamilton came into this weekend ready to break one of his streaks (source: F1TV commentators):
– never qualified higher than 7th this year
– never qualified lower than 5th in Canada.
Surprisingly, it was the 2nd streak he broke this weekend.
Christopher Rehn (@chrischrill)
12th June 2024, 14:28
This is Max Verstappen’s first win from outside pole position this year, and his second consecutive non-pole position.
This race marked the highest number of retired drivers (5) since Brazil last year where 5+1 (Leclerc was a DNS) drivers retired from the race.
Qualifying was affected by rain again in Canada, which has been the case for three consecutive Canadian GPs. The last dry qualifying session was back in 2019, pre-pandemic.
Leksa (@leksa)
12th June 2024, 16:10
I don’t think intermediates were used by anyone, so technically it was a dry qualifying.
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
12th June 2024, 14:33
A new podium trio.
This was the first time that Norris and Russell shared a podium since Silverstone 2018, in the F2 Sprint race.
Christopher Rehn (@chrischrill)
12th June 2024, 14:55
Nicely spotted, Eurobrun!
Red Andy (@red-andy)
12th June 2024, 14:50
When was the last time Hamilton led a race with a legal car?
N
12th June 2024, 15:54
Cringe.
MGus.ai
12th June 2024, 15:58
but accurate
Nick T.
13th June 2024, 11:04
How is it accurate?
Jere (@jerejj)
12th June 2024, 16:40
@red-andy That would be the 2023 Italian GP which he led for laps 23 & 24.
Jockey Ewing
13th June 2024, 2:03
Now I will be a bit of trilley trolley:
The answer depends on whether we consider the “Sprint races” a proper race or not.
Because if yes, then he led some laps during the early stages of the Sprint race of Shanghai in 2024.
If not, then I tend to believe that Jere’s answer is correct.
MGus.ai
12th June 2024, 15:58
Oh, no, it were the car all the time?
sam
12th June 2024, 16:19
No one wins without a car.
Craig
12th June 2024, 16:47
Funny as it would be to quite literally see a driver running around the track to keep up.
SteveP
12th June 2024, 18:31
Ah, a race Alpine could win. Maybe.
Mayrton
13th June 2024, 7:13
Nah, they’d trip over each other
Moi
13th June 2024, 11:42
I’d bet on Hulkenberg. Yuki dead last :D
Nick T.
13th June 2024, 11:08
Of course it wasn’t just the car. However, like most drivers who amass a lot of titles, they’ve been blessed with a car that could or should win a title for many more seasons than most have.
Nick T.
13th June 2024, 11:57
FTR, being a Hamilton fan doesn’t make you Team LH. I’m referring to the hordes of Hamilton fans who live on Twitter and scream “racism” every time something they don’t like happens and are just generally delusional. There are plenty of sane Hamilton fans.
Nick T.
13th June 2024, 11:58
Whoops, this comment was meant to be below.
Jere (@jerejj)
12th June 2024, 16:33
The 1997 European GP in Jerez was the most recent event with more than a single driver setting an identical lap time on the top in qualifying, although I never realized timing to thousands, i.e., the smallest amount has been a thing only since the 1980s.
I guess technology simply wasn’t ready yet for such precise timing in the even more distant past.
The second 2024 race where Guanuy Zhou finished last & the first for Yuki Tsunoda as the last driver on the lead lap.
Besides the former, who was the only one to finish the race as lapped, only Logan Sargeant & Charles Leclerc were running as lapped at any point in the race.
Max Verstappen has taken 50 victories over the last 75 races.
Additionally, the Red Bull-Honda partnership’s 60th victory in less than 6 seasons.
Riccard
12th June 2024, 16:45
More precise timing has had as much to do with car tech as timing tech.
When F1 started, a lot of races measured in round seconds, because cars were ‘close’ if they lapped within a second or two of each other.
As cars and drivers became better and more consistent, times became closer together, and most races started timing in tenths.
These days it is fairly normal for two of the cars (not necessarily the first two) to be the same to within a hundredth… so we need the thousandth for precision.
Jere (@jerejj)
12th June 2024, 16:52
I normally don’t add anything afterwards, but as a one-off thing:
Sergio Perez has had more Q1 exits since joining Red Bull Racing (6) than Lando Norris has had in his entire career (5).
Riccard – I hadn’t realized such correlation with timing & cars, but always something new to learn.
Nick T.
13th June 2024, 11:50
His average quali and finishing position compared to Max is even more stark. It’s something like:
2024 Quali & Result: P1/P7, P1/P6
2023 Quali & Result: P1/P5, P1/P2 (his best rate)
2022 Quali & Result: P1/P8, P1/6
Someone posted the actual specifics a few days ago, but can’t be bothered to find it right now. Though the above more or less tells the story.
roadrunner (@roadrunner)
12th June 2024, 17:32
Russell was beaten by 0.001 seconds twice in the last two rounds. This time he finally managed to find the crucial one thousandth of a second to start ahead.
paulgilb (@paulgilb)
12th June 2024, 20:22
It also happened in the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix, although on that occasion Leclerc was promoted into the top 10 due to penalties.
First time Ocon has started outside the top 10 in Montreal.
McLaren’s first points in Canada since 2014.
McLaren are the only team yet to have a DNF in a Grand Prix this year.
Leclerc’s first no-score since Sao Paulo 2023, and first non-scoring weekend since Netherlands 2023. Norris and Piastri now have the respective longest uninterrupted streaks (10 GPs, 11 weekends).
First time the podium featured no driver who finished on the podium in the previous race since Abu Dhabi 2022.
Mercedes keep alive their streak of at least 1 pole every year since 2012 as a constructor (they trail Ferrari from 1994-2008) and since 2003 as an engine supplier (a record).
The record streak of at least 1 pole position by a British driver every season since 2004 is maintained.
Thanks to statsf1 and the official F1 site for some of these.
MadMax (@madmax)
13th June 2024, 8:12
Hey look, Verstappen-cult is already there. Like on ever article about Hamilton. How expectable.
Erik
13th June 2024, 20:51
And offcourse not you! You’re not the one who actually have madmax as his username, I mean how pre-occupied can you be?? I mean you cannot be this ignorant and delusional and think you can call someone else this, OOOH the irony!
Dale
15th June 2024, 13:52
Fred pulled off a coup and signed a ‘has-been’.
He would have been better off sticking with Carlos.