Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel qualified 13th and 14th at Spa-Francorchamps, and finished 14th and 13th.
As Vettel admitted afterwards, this was “the reality”: They hadn’t been unlucky with a Safety Car or made a strategy error or suffered a technical failure. The seventh-row start and identical finishing positions was simply a reflection of how quick the cars were, or weren’t.When was the last time Ferrari achieved a worse two-car finish in a race than this? Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa came in 14th and 15th at Silverstone in 2010, but Alonso had served a penalty and Massa lost time with a puncture.
For a worse combined finish entirely ‘on merit’ you have to go back to the previous year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, when Kimi Raikkonen and Giancarlo Fisichella took the chequered flag 12th and 16th respectively.
There is good news for the tifosi in that depressing statistic: Ferrari won the very next race.
Lewis Hamilton won again on Sunday, leading from lights to flag for the 22nd time in his career, and adding his 93rd pole position and 89th victory. There are 10 races left on the 2020 F1 calendar for him to score the two more wins he needs to equal Michael Schumacher’s all-time record.
Yet again this season, Hamilton came close to scoring a ‘grand slam’ of pole, win, fastest lap and leading every lap. However Daniel Ricciardo claimed the fastest lap on the final tour, the 14th of his career, which puts him level with Valtteri Bottas.
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This was the 32nd fastest lap for Renault, and the first the team has scored in the V6 hybrid turbo era. Their last came courtesy of Robert Kubica in the 2010 Canadian Grand Prix. Fourth and fifth in the race equalled their best finish since returning to the sport in 2016, which they also achieved at last year’s Italian Grand Prix.
Esteban Ocon equalled his best career result with fifth place, which he previously scored at the 2017 Spanish and Mexican grands prix.
Hamilton extended his streak of consecutive points finishes to 40, which is a record, and he and Max Verstappen took their sixth podium finishes in a row.
After dropping out immediately after the start of last year’s race, Carlos Sainz Jnr must have thought he could only do better this year. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. Having achieved his best Spa qualifying position of seventh, he failed to start due to an exhaust failure caused by a power unit problem.
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Have you spotted any other interesting stats and facts from the Belgian Grand Prix? Share them in the comments.
2020 Belgian Grand Prix
- 2020 Belgian Grand Prix Star Performers
- Ricciardo believes Renault’s Spa set-up breakthrough will work on other tracks
- ‘He should have let me pass’: How Raikkonen saw Giovinazzi’s crash
- Sub-54 second laps will produce a “big mess” in qualifying on Bahrain Outer circuit
- McLaren expect Ferrari will “strike back” after Monza
Chaitanya
31st August 2020, 12:32
Hamilton took record for most laps lead and he is only 2 wins away from taking all time race wins record. If he wins next 2 races he will take that record marking 1000th race for Italian outfit in their backyard and their driver holds that record.
Reality102
31st August 2020, 12:59
Nope, you’re wrong. In two races he can equal the record, not take the record.
anon
31st August 2020, 13:04
Chaitanya, Hamilton has taken the record for the greatest distance spent in the lead of a race, which is given as 24,297km compared to 24,148km for Schumacher. However, in terms of number of lap in the lead, Schumacher is still ahead – he is on 5,111 laps, versus 4,791 laps for Hamilton.
Part of that could be because, in older seasons, the average lap length was shorter – if you look at the 1990s, average lap lengths were about 1km shorter than they are now. For a given total race distance, if the circuits are shorter on average, then although both drivers might have led for the same distance, the shorter circuit length means one driver will have led for more laps, since the total lap count will have been adjusted to match.
ColdFly (@)
31st August 2020, 12:33
And the first time since Korea 2013 that Ferrari was beaten by a PU customer team.
Ouch!
playstation361
31st August 2020, 13:08
Very bad time being.
Jere (@jerejj)
31st August 2020, 13:47
The 2nd DNF for Antonio Giovinazzi in Spa on as many attempts in F1.
Like with Silverstone 1, the number of DNFs alongside the single DNS was two.
No one got lapped even once in this race, not even temporarily before an SC-period or a pit stop for the leader.
Renault’s haul of 23 points in this race is the most they’ve achieved in any race ever as a constructor.
Pierre Gasly’s P8 means he’s never finished lower than 9th in the Belgian GP.
Kimi Raikkonen’s finished as the highest Ferrari-powered driver in what was the 1000th world championship F1 event for Ferrari engines.
Esploratore (@esploratore)
1st September 2020, 1:43
Obviously the renault stat is a bit misleading, in practice it says this is the most competitive they’ve been since several years, cause they most definitely got some 1-2s in the 2005 and 2006 years, but points were harder to come by.
Loetkoe
1st September 2020, 7:58
Just one between 2005-2006, in the 2006 Malaysian GP. The only other 1-2 for Renault came in the 1982 French GP
Jelle van der Meer (@)
31st August 2020, 14:00
I know half of the world it saying Hamilton is on fire this year – his best performance so far. Looking at the actual points scored funny enough Hamilton is doing slightly worse than last year, Bottas a lot worse and Max better helped by failing Ferrari.
Also Mercedes this year (264 points) despite having a strong car has less points than last year (295 points) after 7 races:
2019 Hamilton 162 points – 2020 157 points
2019 Bottas 133 points – 2020 107 points
2019 Max 88 points – 2020 110 points
2019 Gasly 36 points – 2020 Albon 48 points
Kasim
31st August 2020, 17:27
Wow I hadn’t realised that. And here we are thinking mercedes is dominating… well.. they are, but they just did more last year. Turns out the only reason it got closer last year was the ‘illegal’ Ferrari engines..
Maybe this is why everyone is so upset Mercedes this year, last year gave the false idea that the others were closer to mercedes
nickthegreek (@nickthegreek)
1st September 2020, 7:21
I don’t think it’s just a matter of points, I (and I guess others) really think HAM’s performance is on an even higher level than last year. I guess the points difference is due to his subpar performance at thE Austria GP
KaIIe (@kaiie)
31st August 2020, 14:27
As some stats mention, this was (apparently) the 1000th entry for Ferrari engines. Does anyone know what are the two missing races from the team or what creates this discrepancy (as the team will reach the milestone in two races)?
FlyingLobster27
31st August 2020, 15:28
@kaiie Looking at the StatsF1.com website, the discrepancies could be:
-France 1950, the Scuderia had 2 cars on the entry list but they did not take part, while Peter Whitehead raced (and scored a podium) in a privateer Ferrari,
-USA 1960, the Scuderia was not on the entry list, but a privateer Cooper-Ferrari driven by Pete Lovely raced.
Bleu (@bleu)
31st August 2020, 17:28
The first one counts for Ferrari. Other one is 1966 British Grand Prix where Chris Lawrence drove Ferrari-powered Cooper.
Guilherme
31st August 2020, 15:02
I don’t know if I laugh or I cry with this.
Samantha (@talcumpowder)
31st August 2020, 15:57
I wouldn’t say that a 12th and a 16th is worse than a 13th and a 15th. In championship terms, only the best result matters if points aren’t scored. I believe this is the second time in Ferrari’s history that both cars finished outside the top 12.
stefano (@alfa145)
31st August 2020, 20:57
if that is indeed true, that’s the most amazing stat on this page
Esploratore (@esploratore)
1st September 2020, 1:47
True actually, it means a certain level of minimum competitiveness every season, and from what I remember it should be true, normally ferrari is quite a reliable team to achieve podiums in every season and to end up as the 3rd best team, this year achieving the 2nd of these seems pretty much impossible, but despite how bad they’ve been they’ve already scored podiums.
BasCB (@bascb)
1st September 2020, 7:49
One does have to take in account though that says “finished outside” @esploratore, @alfa145, @talcumpowder. Since there are probably far more instances where they had a worse result but did NOT finish, especially in earlier seasons when reliability was a far bigger factor :-)
Samantha (@talcumpowder)
1st September 2020, 8:54
That’s true. It’s also ignoring any time the Ferraris were both classified and had a worse result but one or both retired in the last few laps, such as Singapore 2008 and Brazil 2019.
Bleu (@bleu)
31st August 2020, 17:30
This was eighth race in history where top three positions have been held by same three drivers in same order throughout the race.
Germany 1966 (15 laps)
Germany 1973 (14)
Germany 1974 (14)
Brazil 1981 (62)
South Africa 1992 (72)
Britain 1992 (59)
Singapore 2015 (61)
Belgium 2020 (44)
The latter two had also those three drivers starting from top three positions in the same order.
Esploratore (@esploratore)
1st September 2020, 1:48
Shows how boring it’s been!
paulgilb (@paulgilb)
31st August 2020, 21:47
First time since Britain 2014 (when both cars went out in Q1) that neither Ferrari reached Q3.
First time since 2016 that Red Bull have started in the top 4 in Spa.
First time since 2015 that Kvyat has started somewhere other than 19th in Spa.
First fastest lap for Renault (under that name) since Canada 2010 – 6th longest gap in history.
Sainz’s DNS means that Mercedes is now the only team to have got both cars to the end in every race this year.
Leclerc keeps alive his record in 2020 of either finishing in the top 4 or not scoring.
With the exception of his DNF at Silverstone, Kvyat has always been classified between 10th and 12th inclusive this year.
First time Kvyat has started ahead of Gasly this year, leaving Albon as the only driver not to have started ahead of his team-mate this year.
Thanks to the official F1 site for some of these.
Esploratore (@esploratore)
1st September 2020, 1:50
Wow, leclerc’s stat is interesting: either I end in a good position or I’m gonna quit!
john okello
1st September 2020, 7:34
Hamilton became the first driver to take points in 40 races continously, Austria 2018 is the last time Hamilton was out of Points.
nickthegreek (@nickthegreek)
1st September 2020, 10:49
on the other hand, these 2009 cars look really cute!
Jelle van der Meer (@)
1st September 2020, 17:37
Believe first time in history (have gone back to 2000) that 3 drivers were on the podium each 6 times in first 7 races.
Hamilton and Max have shared the podium in the last 6 races consecutively. That is not a record, I believe the record is 9 consecutive races that the same 2 drivers stood on the podium – Hamilton & Rosberg the first 9 races of 2015