Rosberg is ninth different Spanish GP winner in a row

2015 Spanish Grand Prix stats and facts

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Nine different drivers have won the last nine Spanish Grands Prix – with Nico Rosberg the most recent to add his name to the winner’s trophy.

This unusual streak began with Felipe Massa in 2007. All bar one of the different winners are still racing in F1 today (see table).

The only missing winner is Mark Webber. Coincidentally, Rosberg’s ninth career victory in yesterday’s race means he has now won as many F1 races as Webber.

It also means Rosberg has finished all five races this year in the position he started. But winning from pole position is far from unusual at the Circuit de Catalunya – 13 out of the last 15 pole sitters went on to win the race.

Rosberg’s pole position was the 16th of his career, putting him level with two other drivers currently racing in F1 – Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa – as well as Stirling Moss. It was Mercedes’ 40th pole position too.

However Lewis Hamilton kept Rosberg from taking a hat-trick by setting the race’s fastest lap. That was the 23rd of his career, giving him as many as Juan Manuel Fangio and Neslon Piquet.

Hamilton also extended his streak of consecutive podium finishes to 12. This is the third-best in F1 history: Michael Schumacher holds the record with 19 (from the 2001 United States to 2002 Japanese Grands Prix) and Fernando Alonso managed 15 (2005 Turkish to 2006 Canadian Grands Prix). This was Hamilton’s 75th career podium.

Hamilton’s run of leading the last 14 races in a row is also the third-best ever seen in F1. The record for this is 45 years old: Jackie Stewart led 17 consecutive races from 1968 to 1970. Hamilton needs one more to equal Schumacher’s best of 15. However next on the calendar is Monaco, where Hamilton hasn’t led a lap since his sole F1 win there in 2008.

Only the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers have led races so far this year. That same quartet have also accounted for all bar five of the laps drivers have spent in second place this year. Surprisingly, the only other driver to have run in second this year is Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg, during the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Mercedes drivers have now spent more than 2,000 laps in the lead of F1 races. But they’ve a long way to go to reach record-holders Ferrari on 13,726.

Carlos Sainz Jnr scored the best qualifying result of his career with fifth. With team mate Max Verstappen sixth – matching his best from Malaysia – Toro Rosso had their best starting positions since Sebastian Vettel and Sebastien Bourdais lined up first and fourth for the 2008 Italian Grand Prix (though the luckless Bourdais was unable to start from that position in the race due to a problem with his car).

Jenson Button made his 100th start for McLaren, which should have occurred at the last race which he failed to start due to a problem with his car’s electrics.

Review the year so far in statistics here:

Spotted any other interesting stats and facts from the Spanish Grand Prix? Share them in the comments.

2015 Spanish Grand Prix

Browse all 2015 Spanish Grand Prix articles

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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 “Rosberg is ninth different Spanish GP winner in a row”

  1. I don’t know if this has happened before, but the whole GP2 field would have qualified within the Q1 107% time. They would also all be ahead of Mehri, and all but four ahead of Stevens.

    Also, I think the GP2 sprint race saw the first use of Virtual Safety car in an F1 weekend

    1. Shaking my head at what F1 has become. I have to go and watch the 2004 Monza qualy laps to remind myself of what we’ve lost.

        1. Travis Humphery (@)
          11th May 2015, 14:15

          Wow, I had completely forgotten what that sounded like….

          1. Forget about the sound, look how great the car looks – beautifully proportioned with the wide low rear wing and narrower and simpler front wing.

          2. Just to jog your memory. Watch this.
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UELuXvbRmM0

          3. And this documentary from engines to aerodynamics is really great.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z5kR6MyEJo

        2. there are actually a few people on this forum sticking up for v6 f1, and “claim” to think that the v6s sound fine. watching that montoya lap reminded me of how f1 used to be a spectacle that could not be matched. how it has fizzled out in the last decade…..

          1. I’m one of those people and we’re are entitled to our opinion. the slowing down of F1 is not the engines but the aero. The 80’s turbo’s sounded no better than the current ones and normally aspirated engines are redundant technology

          2. I’m currently in the middle with the sound, what I like though is the sound the tyres make when the cars brake; Its sounds like they’re screaming!

          3. petebaldwin (@)
            11th May 2015, 17:43

            @broke84 – The problem is that they’ve slowed them down and it’s not achieved anything. They were meant to cut aero so that the cars could follow more closely but the race this weekend proved that hasn’t worked. The cars would have all burnt their tyres out trying to stay within a second without DRS to give them an easy pass on the straight.

            Aero needs to be cut again (the front wings look to be as complex again as they were before the previous chances!) so that the cars can follow more closely and can race. Then we can look at getting rid of DRS. The tyres also need to allow the drivers to push so they don’t back off and maintain a gap more often than not.

        3. @gridlock Thanks, I miss that deafening screech

    2. Wow, 2017 can’t come soon enough…
      Also, you mean the first use of virtual safety car in a race situation right, I think virtual safety cars have been used on race weekends before (US GP 2014).

      1. What’s happening in 2017?

    3. Gp2 har softer tires, f1 used way to hard tires for this race

      1. i think that is irrelevent. we are comparing the so called best category of motoracing with a feeder series – it should not come done to “tyre specs”,

        1. Tires are a huge part of everything. Do you not remember when Marussia was the fastest time in testing last year? Because they ran super soft tires whereas no one else did.

    4. Bored of hearing this as an attack on F1. Even if it would prove anything, GP2 cars are not almost as fast as F1 cars.

      First of all, meeting the 107 percent mark doesn’t prove anything in itself. The time is supposed to mark a far threshold of being too slow for an F1 car, i.e., too slow that it is just a danger to other cars, so I don’t know why this is a benchmark for being F1-quick. Furthermore, in objective terms, 7 percent of 85 seconds is almost 6 seconds. This is not “close.” On the main straight at 200 mph, this 6 second lag means that GP2 car comes around to start-finish more than 1/3 of a mile behind the F1 car. The GP2 car is almost one minute behind after 10 laps and will be lapped in a few more rounds. So much for almost as quick.

      And the fact that the Manors are in the shadow of the cut-off doesn’t prove anything. A cobbled-together F1 car using last year’s technology versus the fastest examples of the latest spec of car from the next rung down may well be evenly matched.

  2. Nico Hülkenberg’s the first driver ever to score points in both WEC and F1 in the same year, as far as I know.
    At the moment he has 6 points from the Australian GP, and 8 for his 6th place with Porsche at Spa. With the current competitiveness of Force India, and double points on offer at Le Mans, he’ll be doing well if he gets more F1 points than WEC ones!

    1. I watched him trundle round in 16th or whatever and thought, there’s a guy who has to be thinking about jumping ship before the season even ends. Can he still be holding on to dreams of a top team drive?

      1. @gridlock If Porsche offer him a full-season contract in the WEC he’d be stupid not to go, really. There’s no room for him at either one of the top teams and there won’t ever be. If there was, he’d be racing for them already.

        1. also he would have more fun race far more sophisticated machinery. he would also have a better chance at becoming a world champion.

          1. If you think F1 is not sophisticated enough already, you don’t deserve to stay here. It is not the world’s most advanced sport, and for good reason too. Sure, they use Hybrids in WEC, but they are of no comparison to the wonders used in F1. I believe that lot’s of things used to suck in F1 before too, just that we didn’t have the internet to crib about it the whole day. Personally, the x-wings are an example of this.

          2. @major-dev WEC has more charge and deploys that charge for about as long as F1 cars. And these cars can run up to 24hrs with much tighter racing and varying strategy. I mean, even the 2011 Le Mans was a nail-biter without any hybrid power.

        2. @tony031r I doubt he’d jump ship now and possibly end his formula one career. As he’s shown he could also race in WEC without a full time drive

          1. @mim5 His problem is that he’s stuck with four teams as an option for next year. And out of those four teams (Force India, Sauber, Lotus and Haas) one is not on the grid yet and we don’t really know if the other three will be on the grid for long. And I don’t see him going back to Sauber or having a spot at Lotus. So it’s Force India (and they really look to be on the brink of collapse this time around) or Haas.

            I’d be signing a (hypothetical) factory Porsche contract with both hands if I were him. And I’d go out there and I’d happily have a shot at racing competitively in a high-level championship with an actual chance of winning something once in a while.

  3. I was not able to find any circuit which would have nine different winners in nine years. Few with eight, most recently in Silverstone 2003-10 (Barrichello, M Schumacher, Montoya, Alonso, Räikkönen, Hamilton, Vettel, Webber) until Alonso won again in 2011.

    Rosberg’s win also means that Daniel Ricciardo is the only driver in the current field who has won a Grand Prix but has not won at Catalunya.

    1. @bleu Here’s hoping that “audi” win it next year.

    2. I was wondering who could be winner number 10 next year. I’d say Ricciardo but he’d need a better engine. More likely it would be someone who hasn’t won yet, like Bottas, or Vandoorne in a McLaren.

  4. – Lotus team mates Grosjean and Maldonado both have retired from exactly 1/3rd of all their races. Only Max Verstappen has a higher retirement race from all of the current drivers. He retired from 60% of all his races

    – With a best of 11th and further a 14th and a 16th place Jenson Button had his worst ever first 5 races of a F1 season. Although in 2005 he retired from the first 3 races, was disqualified for the 4th race (where he finished 3rd) and the whole BAR team was excluded for the 5th and 6th race of the season. In the 7th race (Buttons 5th of the season) he became 10th

    – With 132 points Ferrari had their best first 5 races of the season ever. although obviously the points system changed in 2010

    – Only Mercedes and Ferrari drivers have stood on the podium in the first five races. The last time this has happened was in 2007 when only McLaren and Ferrari drivers stoon on the podium for the first 5 races. In the 6th race of that season (Canada) Nick Heidfeld scored a second place finish for BMW Sauber

    – After five races Williams already have scored more points (81) than in the year of their last victory, 2012, where they scored 76 points

  5. Nico Rosberg and Pastor Maldonado are the only drivers currently on the grid that have not won at least two races in a row.

    1. @thetobs you mean among those that are race winners?

  6. This season looks like it could potentially have podiums dominated solely by Mercedes and Ferrari. I could be wrong but I think the record is 2007, when all but 4 podium spots across the entire season were occupied by Mclaren and Ferrari.

    1. That’s not totally right. In 2007 Nick Heidfeld, Mark Webber and Heikki Kovalainen all got one podium as well

      1. @jlracing That’s why he said “all but 4 podium spots across the entire season were occupied by Mclaren and Ferrari”, which is correct. Heidfeld also got two podiums not one.

        1. Sorry I read too fast and missed the all but 4 part.. Tom was totally correct

  7. This was the fifth consecutive GP in which both Mercedes cars finished on the podium. The only cars to manage this feat before this year were Ferrari in 2002 and 2004, and Mercedes in 2014. Dominance! Not even the MP4/4 or FW14B managed this.

    As far as I can tell no team has ever placed both cars on the podium for six consecutive GP’s, a milestone Mercedes can reach in Monaco.

  8. OmarR-Pepper - Vettel 40 victories!!! (@)
    11th May 2015, 16:00

    Andae23 told me this one so he deserves the credit. This is McLaren worst start of a season with no points in 5 races.
    At least the team has kept true to their promise of “making history”.

    1. And this is the best season start for Ferrari ever (though points system changed, didn’t look up the old versions) and Vettel had the best start for a Ferrari driver ever (independent of points situation-positions are accounted for).
      So a bit interesting for Alonso. His choice though, not that I think it is absolutely proven to be the wrong choice yet.

  9. Vettel is the most successful Ferrari driver in the first five racers of their career

    1. What about Collins and Fangio?

      1. And Gonzalez actually.

        1. @matt90 depends a bit on whether you allow shared drives, and if so, how you count them. All of those you mention shared drives. Not counting the points for those shared drives (as this isn’t allowed in 2015) gets Vettel on top. Counting half points for the finishing positions, as was done back then, still isn’t enough for Fangio. Collins gets an equal 80 points to Vettel. Only Gonzalez is on top.

  10. Vettel has already managed the same number of podiums in 2015 as he did in 2014 (4).

    Stevens’ finishing positions: 15-16-17. Merhi’s finishing positions: 15-16-17-18.

    5 different drivers have finished 5th in the 5 races this year.

    Maldonado has had 3 non-mechanical DNFs this year – 3 more than anybody else (excluding Bottas’s DNS).

    3 of the 4 drivers with exactly 16 poles to their name have been involved in World Championship deciders that also involved Lewis Hamilton.

    And some from magnetimarelli.com:

    24th consecutive Mercedes-powered pole – equals Renault’s record from 1992-93 (all with Williams).

    18th time Hamilton and Rosberg have shared the front row – equals Fangio-Ascari and Hakkinen-Coulthard.

    Mercedes are the first team to lock out the front row in Catalunya 3 years in a row.

    First time Grosjean has qualified lower than 6th in Catalunya.

    First time since Abu Dhabi 2009 that both Force Indias dropped out in Q1.

    Hulkenberg’s joint-lowest grid position in a dry Q1 without mechanical problems.

    14th Hamilton-Rosberg 1-2 for Mercedes – equals Senna and Prost at McLaren.

    First time since Italy 2014 that Hamilton lost a place on the opening lap.

    First time since France-Britain-Europe 2007 that Raikkonen has led 3 consecutive races.

    First time since 2001 that Alonso has gone 4 races without scoring.

    First time since 1978 that McLaren have gone 5 races without scoring.

    1. poor Kimi :(

  11. I didnt like this weekend’s race. So went on Youtube and watched the race from 2004. Spectacular cars and a battle between Schumi and Alonso. Much more interesting, would give anything to go back to those days.

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