Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Nurburgring, 2020

Hamilton and Mercedes equal two major F1 records in one race

2020 Eifel Grand Prix stats and facts

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You couldn’t fail to notice Lewis Hamilton equalled Michael Schumacher’s all-time wins record at the Eifel Grand Prix last weekend.

The milestone win was heavily-promoted and long-awaited. Indeed, an edition of Stats and Facts published almost exactly three years ago projected “Hamilton could tie with Schumacher some time in late 2020”.

It took Hamilton 261 races to equal Schumacher’s record. That’s 15 starts more than Schumacher needed to reach 91 wins. However Schumacher then started 60 further races without winning any of them – it’s hard to imagine Hamilton, who just scored his seventh win in 11 races this year, is about to do the same.

Hamilton is the 10th different driver in the history of Formula 1 to have held the record for most wins. His predecessors are Giuseppe Farina, Juan Manuel Fangio, Johnny Parsons, Alberto Ascari, Stirling Moss, Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, Alain Prost and Schumacher.

But Hamilton also played a role in equalling another major record on Sunday. This was the 228th consecutive race in which a Mercedes-powered car scored a point. That matches the record set by Ford-Cosworth, who achieved the same in a 16-year-spell from the 1967 Canadian Grand Prix to the 1983 Dutch Grand Prix. Mercedes’ streak began at the 2008 Chinese Grand Prix (the occasion of Hamilton’s ninth win).

Mercedes’ points-scoring run began in Hamilton’s second season
While the longer calendar today means Mercedes’ run spanned fewer years, both manufacturers managed an entire decade of points-scoring: Ford in the seventies, Mercedes the noughties. A couple of caveats are needed: Only the top six cars scored points when Ford set the record, while in some races they faced very few non-Ford-powered opposition.

Mercedes moved a step closer to an unprecedented clean sweep of every pole position this year. Valtteri Bottas delivered their 11th since the season began and 12th in a row overall (halfway to Williams’ record of 24). It was the 14th of his career, putting him level with Alberto Ascari, James Hunt, Ronnie Peterson, and Rubens Barrichello.

Coincidentally, Max Verstappen’s ninth fastest lap of his career also puts him level with Peterson, along with Denny Hulme and Jacques Villeneuve.

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Hamilton extended his record run of consecutive points finishes to 44 – matching his race number. He also has the second-longest streak of 33. This benchmark previously belonged to Kimi Raikkonen, but he took a new record last weekend by surpassing Barrichello as the most experienced driver in the history of F1.

Nico Hulkenberg, Racing Point, Nurburgring, 2020
Hulkenberg returned for another home race
The Eifel Grand Prix was Raikkonen’s 323rd start. He should reach 329 in Abu Dhabi, and if he fancies sticking around for another year could well reach 350 in the 2021 F1 season.

Daniel Ricciardo scored his first podium for more than two years and his first since joining Renault. This was their first visit to the rostrum since returning to F1 as a full works team in 2016.

Nick Heidfeld gave Renault their last podium finish – also their 100th – at the Malaysian Grand Prix in 2011. (The team liked to call itself Lotus Renault at the time, but was officially entered as Renault, and only changed its designation the following year.)

Finally, Nico Hulkenberg’s eighth race on home ground was a very unexpected development: He wasn’t originally on this year’s grid and Germany didn’t have a round on the 2020 F1 calendar.

The Nurburgring held its 41st round of the world championship under its fourth different name: the Eifel Grand Prix joins the German Grand Prix, the European Grand Prix and the Luxembourg Grand Prix. This is the most different race titles used by a championship venue.

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Video: The history of F1’s record for most wins

Have you spotted any other interesting stats and facts from the Eifel Grand Prix? Share them in the comments.

2020 Eifel Grand Prix

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Author information

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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30 comments on “Hamilton and Mercedes equal two major F1 records in one race”

  1. Lewis can finish 3rd (behind VER and BOT) in all remaining races and be champion.

    1. Are you talking about 2020 or 2021?#borefest

      1. hahahaha, nice one

  2. This is the first season since 2012 to have 7 different teams finishing in a podium place. That year the team standing the lowest in the WCC of those teams (Williams) only had one podium, but it was a win, just like AlphaTauri this year (so far).

    1. @hunocsi – A good stat, but it really masks the reality of the season and is misleading. (note: I’m not saying that you are doing this, just that the stat can seen a certain way.)

      2020
      Merc 10 of 11 wins; 17 of 22 possible podium positions (17 of 33 overall) so far.

      2012 (at 11 race mark)
      7 different winners, no one with more than 2 at this point; McLaren and Lotus-Renault had 8 of 33 podiums. And even though RBR/Vettel finished the season in a fairly dominant fashion, the team had 14 podiums for the entire twenty-race season.

      1. @hobo I wasn’t trying to suggest anything with it, obviously this season isn’t as unpredictable in any way. I picked out the Williams – AlphaTauri stat because it’s an interesting match, but Williams finishing on the podium that year wasn’t really an anomaly (they probably could have scored more with better drivers), whereas even a podium for AlphaTauri was unlikely to happen in normal circumstances. In fact without everything that happened in Monza, we would probably be at 5 different constructors scoring a podium so far. The biggest thing that helped compared to recent seasons is that instead of 5-6 outstanding cars in every race, we only have 3 this season, behind them the others are close to each other, and waiting for only 3 cars to hit some trouble gives a much bigger chance for different teams to step up.

        1. @hunocsi – Completely understand that you weren’t saying the seasons were the same. I even said that above.

          I just thought it was interesting that the two years are so different even with so many on the podium already.

      2. Mercedes have won 9 (not 10) races of 11 so far this season.

        1. yep, saw that after i posted.

  3. The previous ‘pure’ Renault top-three finish came at the 2010 Belgian GP.

    For the first time in F1, Daniil Kvyat has finished as the lowest-placed driver reaching the chequered flag in a race.

    The first DNF for Valtteri Bottas since last season’s Brazilian GP.

    Five of the last six races at the Nurburgring have been won from 2nd on the grid.

    Honda took only their 2nd ever podium finish at the Nurburgring, following Jenson Button’s with BAR back in 2004.

    Renault became the 7th different team on the podium this season, which is the most since 2012.

    Nico Hulkenberg has as many top-eight finishes this season as Sebastian Vettel despite only taking part in two races versus 11 for the latter.

  4. This is also Lewis’s 44th consecutive race without a retirement. His last retirement was at the Austrian GP in 2018.

  5. First time since Mexico 2018 that the pole-sitter did not finish the race

  6. For all his dominance it’s interesting that Hamilton still hasn’t taken the consecutive wins record off of Vettel.

    Also it’s shocking to be reminded that Schumacher spend 60 races in his fruitless comeback. That’s a whole f1 career for other drivers. But yet he left too early, immediately making way for his records to fall.

    1. Dave (@davewillisporter)
      12th October 2020, 19:01

      Vettel’s 9 win streak was a combination of Mark backsliding as he lost motivation and Seb’s unmatched ability to drive the blown diffuser. Mark just couldn’t live with him once he figured that out. At Merc, both Rosberg and Bottas drove the car with similar set ups to Hamilton. There’s no magic bullet to find to completely eclipse your team mate and both Rosberg and Bottas are very quick drivers. I can’t remember which race it was that alongside Schumi at Merc, Rosberg got pole. Schumi on the in lap asked what Rosberg’s time was and on being told replied “wow” It is both a testament to Merc and all three drivers that Lewis doesn’t walk away with it. They all fought hard and were / are allowed to despite some tin hat conspiratorial opinions.

      1. I don’t remember Webber being unmotivated, I felt at the time he really wanted to go out with a win, but he just couldn’t match Vettel on race pace by then (pretty much the whole season). And if I recall correctly, he was screwed over by his team’s tactics in favor of Vettel in Japan that year when Vettel’s possible consecutive win record started to take an outline, which looked like Webber’s best shot at a win, but he got an extra tyre change for some reason.

      2. @davewillisporter Webber wasn’t unmotivated, he had his wings clipped after he turned out to be too much of a nuisance to Vettel.

        1. When was Webber “clipped”?

          Vettel was always faster than Webber, unless Webber had a good day.

      3. It had a lot to do with tyre rules suspiciously changing mid-season. Before that, it was a closely contested fight and Alonso was favoured my many to win. After the change, Vettel had his record win series and ran away with the championship.

    2. @dmw

      To be fair to Hamilton – Vettel would likely have won 11 in a row but for Hamilton’s inspired pole and drive in Hungary.

    3. I’ve heard it said both Vettel and Schumacher had a clause in their contract that required the team to order their team mate to move aside if they were behind them. Hamilton has claimed he doesn’t have such a clause and never has. I’m not sure if that makes Hamilton’s 91 victories better than Schumacher’s, but they definitely aren’t somehow inferior.

      1. “valtteri, this is James”…
        Nope no such contract..

  7. Johnnie Parsons? I had to look that up. A fascinating historic note IMO.

    1. Yes, but I’m pretty sure Stirling Moss never held that record. @keithcollantine

      1. Yeah, I was thinking the same. Moss didn’t win his first race until fangio had won a few and overall Moss “only” won 16 compared to fangio’s 24.

  8. At the previous period of Renault entering the sport, the first podium was Alonso’s 2003 at Sepang, also claim pole position there and also the place of Kimi’s 1st win.
    It takes two years to become champions.

  9. It seems that Lewis also passed the 44000 km mark during the race…

  10. Seen on twitter, so could be wrong. Mercedes have re-established their 50% win rate last held in 55, by now having 111 wins from 221 starts.

  11. Perez, Hulkenberg and Stroll have all partnered each other at the same team this season – first time this has happened since Chilton, Bianchi, and Rossi for Marussia in 2014 (although Rossi did not end up competing in either race). First time that 3 different drivers have started races as team-mates to each other in the same season since Karthikeyan, Ricciardo, and Liuzzi for HRT in 2011.

    Bottas’ first top 16 start at the Nurburgring.

    Williams start 17th and 18th, as they did in the previous Nurburgring race.

    Perez has scored more points in 2020 than he managed in the whole of 2018 (a season in which he managed a podium).

    All 3 Racing Point drivers have scored in every race they have finished this year. Perez and Hulkenberg have each scored in every race they have started this year.

    9 different teams scored points – first time since Azerbaijan 2017

    10 different drivers have scored podiums this year – most since 2015.

    All teams have now had at least 1 DNF this year.

    Thanks to statsf1 and the official F1 site for some of these.

  12. No surprise Bottas failed to finish. Finnish drivers on pole at the Nurburgring are notoriously unlucky.

    Hakkinen 1997 – Retired
    Raikkonen 2003,2007 – Retired both times
    Bottas 2020 -Retired

    1. Poor forgotten Kimi in these race stats.

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