British GP Stats

By Adam Tate, Associate Editor

The British Grand Prix was a thrilling race, it was also statistically significant in many ways, especially for the victorious Sebastian Vettel. Here are all the interesting stats to come out of a great weekend of racing at Silverstone.

Sebastian Vettel took his 51st win and is now tied with Alain Prost for third all time after Michael Schumacher with 91 wins and Lewis Hamilton with 65. Vettel is also tied with Prost and Hamilton on four titles, but he comes up short on tying the French legend for podiums by just one, 105 to 106. Hamilton is a ways up the road for podiums and currently has 124, just 31 behind Schumacher’s record.

It was the 97th podium finish for Kimi Raikkonen, who has tied old rival Fernando Alonso. At this pace, Kimi will join the 100 podium club later this season and become just the fifth driver to ever do so.

Though Hamilton was bummed about coming home second, his consolation prize is tying yet another of Ayrton Senna’s records by scoring the sixth pole position for his home race. While Senna’s record of six poles in Brazil is split three a piece at the no longer extant Jacarepagua and Interlagos, Hamilton’s have all taken place at Silverstone.

It was the 300th race start for Fernando Alonso, who became just the fourth driver to ever reach the lofty milestone and will likely break Rubens Barrichello’s record of 322 if he doesn’t leave for IndyCar next year. The Spaniard celebrated with yet another points scoring finish in the lame duck McLaren after maintaining his perfect qualifying record this season against team mate Stoffel Vandoorne.

Despite the season only just nearing its halfway point, only Vettel has finished and scored points in every race as unreliability and crashes have been more common this year. In fact, seven of the 10 races this season have seen a retirement due to an unsafe release from the pits and a loose wheel ruining someone’s day.

On an even stranger note, all of Sebastian Vettel’s wins this season have taken place in countries that are former or current British territories. If he can keep that up the German will have to win in Singapore, Austin and Abu Dhabi.