Carlos Sainz Jr, Ferrari, Silverstone, 2022

Sainz’s victory means more than half the F1 grid are race-winners

2022 British Grand Prix stats and facts

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The British Grand Prix produced a new race winner in Carlos Sainz Jnr, who took his first victory in his 150th start.

That’s the second-longest wait a driver has had for their first win. Sergio Perez, who finished second on Sunday, took 190 races to claim his maiden victory at the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix.

F1 has had a spate of new winners over the last two years. Sainz in the fourth driver to claim their first victory within that time, joining Perez, Pierre Gasly (2020 Italian Grand Prix) and Esteban Ocon (2021 Hungarian Grand Prix).

Those four drivers took their first wins in the last 42 races. In comparison, the four first-time winners before them appeared over the preceding 121 races.

(L to R): Fernando Alonso, Alpine; Carlos Sainz Jr, Ferrari; Silverstone, 2022
Spain now has two grand prix-winning drivers
The current grid is therefore well-stocked with race winners. Sainz’s victory means 11 of the 20 drivers – more than half – have won at least one race.

Sainz took his first pole position 24 hours earlier. This was also at his 150th attempt, and also leaves him behind Perez, who took a record 215 races to claim his first pole in Saudi Arabia earlier this year.

In the history of the world championship, Sainz is the 112th driver to win a points-scoring round and the 104th driver to set pole position. He is the first Spanish driver besides Fernando Alonso to win a race, and puts their country level with the USA in terms of total wins in the championship: 33.

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Sainz was so happy with his breakthrough win he laughed “I don’t care!” when told on his radio that Lewis Hamilton denied him the fastest lap of the race. This was the 60th of Hamilton’s career.

Mick Schumacher, Haas, Silverstone, 2022
Mick Schumacher finally grabbed his first points
The Mercedes driver also led a race for the first time this year. He has now led races in 16 consecutive seasons, which is a new record, putting him ahead of Michael Schumacher.

At his 31st attempt, Schumacher’s son Mick Schumacher claimed his first points with an eighth-place finish. The longest wait a driver had to score their first points was Nicola Larini’s 44-race wait to get on the board, which occured back when only the top six finishers scored points.

Schumacher is only the second driver in F1 history to score points in car number 47. The first was Stoffel Vandoorne when he finished 10th on his debut for McLaren in the 2016 Bahrain Grand Prix.

Guanyu Zhou, Alfa Romeo, Silverstone, 2022
Zhou shone in qualifying before his horror crash
The ever-improving Zhou Guanyu out-qualified his team mate for the third race in a row and improved his career-best qualifying position for the second weekend running. That excellent work was undone by his frightening first-lap crash which led the British Grand Prix to be red-flagged on lap one for the second year in a row.

Sainz’s victory means Ferrari increased their haul of British Grand Prix wins to 18, which is the most of any team. They now have four more than McLaren, who have not won their home race since Hamilton’s triumph for them in 2008. Ferrari is the only team besides Mercedes to have won this race in the last 10 years, though in 2020 Red Bull won the extra Silverstone rounds, dubbed the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix.

Finally, Fernando Alonso achieved another career longevity record. He overtook Kimi Raikkonen as the driver who has raced the longest distance in Formula 1. Alonso has covered 92,643 kilometres in races – for Minardi, Renault, McLaren, Ferrari and Alpine – 47km more than his 2014 team mate.

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

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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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35 comments on “Sainz’s victory means more than half the F1 grid are race-winners”

  1. can you put the key word ”statistics” in the title of those statistical analyses. Otherwise we hav no idea if it is a recap of the race of precisely the statistical facts.

    1. The sub-heading has “stats and facts” in it, together with the race identifier.

  2. I do love these articles. I was surprised that Sainz had participated in 150 grand prix already when that came up on Saturday. I guess he’s spent most of his career slightly out of focus and not under the spotlight until Ferrari saw something.

    And a big thank you to whichever sleuth calculated that ‘Alonso has covered 92,643 kilometres’ in an F1 car – as that is race distances, I imagine the actual figure frightening higher. The moon is approximately 380,000km away. But he’ll have to stop going in circles to get there.

  3. Latifi’s first Q3 appearance albeit not the first time he’s started in P10.

    Sainz’s first win in motorsport since September 28, 2014, when he won for the last time in his championship-winning 2014 FR 3.5 campaign.
    Coincidently, until the last race, the 2013 Spanish GP was the most recent race after which the Spanish-Italian anthem combination got played on the podium.
    He also became the fourth driver to win a race this season, meaning all four drivers within the current two regular top teams have at least one victory in this year’s campaign.

    The 2nd consecutive British GP with an opening lap stoppage & third in the hybrid era (2014 with Kimi’s off on the Wellington straight) & also the 2nd consecutive (& at least fourth overall) with a driver going to the nearest hospital.
    Additionally, at least the 1999 race also featured an opening-lap red.

    The 2nd British GP with track invasion following the infamous 2003 invasion on the Hangar straight.

    Hamilton’s first fastest lap point since the inaugural Saudi Arabian GP.
    He also became the fifth different drive with a bonus point this season after the RBR duo, Leclerc, & Norris, & Mercedes the fourth different team.

    Alfa Romeo’s first double-DNF since last season’s final race.

    The 2nd race this season following the Monaco GP, in which Tsunoda finished as the last runner.

    Russell’s 100% top-five finishing record ended, albeit only via DNF rather than him finishing outside the top-five.

    1. Isn’t it the 4th race with a track invasion, all of which have been won by Ferrari?

      1. @Axel Not for Silverstone AFAIA, but four different instances, both Silverstone ones + 2004 Spanish & 2015 Singapore, all four won by Ferrari, so in this regard, yes.

  4. Carlos Sainz jr is the 8th different winner with ‘car’ in their name.

    Alberto Ascari
    Carlos Reutemann
    Riccardo Patrese
    Giancarlo Fisichella
    Giancarlo Baghetti
    Ludovico Scarfiotti
    José Carlos Pace
    Carlos Sainz Jr.

    Source: twitter

    1. Great one.

  5. Can someone explain to me why Carlos has started 150, while Max has started 151, and they started their F1-career exactly at the same time?
    When I check historical data, it seems (according to the stats) Carlos hasn’t started the 2021 Belgian “race”, but in the results I can see he finished P10!

    What’s wrong here?

    1. He didn’t start the 2020 Belgian Grand Prix, not the 2021 edition.

      1. You’re right! It’s hard to read things correctly sometimes ;-)

  6. Crazy to think that half the grid has race winners. Russell and Norris are extremely unlucky to not be included in that list. If they were, then 65% of the grid would have race winners.

    I don’t know if we’ve ever had a grid with higher % of race winners before. In 2012, we had 10 winners – Alonso, Massa, Hamilton, Button, Schumacher, Rosberg, Vettel, Webber, Maldonado and Kovalainen, but even that was in a 22 driver grid, which made it less than 50%

    1. Depends how you count. For example, the 1978 Belgian GP had 15 (!) GP winners on the grid. If you count only the drivers who actually started the race (24), the percentage is pretty high, but if you take into account DNPQ and DNQ, the number naturally goes down.

    2. 2012 had a 24 driver grid actually.

  7. Jonathan Parkin
    7th July 2022, 9:05

    Mick now has 9 races to get a pole position before his father and 13 races to get a Fastest Lap before his Uncle

    1. @Jonathan Parkin Do you mean 9 races to get his first pole position & 13 to get his fastest lap sooner than their respective first pole & FLAP? I assume, yes, but just slightly unsure how to interpret your wording.

      1. Jonathan Parkin
        7th July 2022, 11:44

        Yes that was what I was going for. Ralf took 46 starts to get a FL, 70 starts to get a win and 76 to get a pole. Michael took 18 starts to get a win and a fastest lap and 42 to get a pole

        Mick is currently on 31 starts so actually he has 10 races in which to get a pole before his dad (damn mental arithmetic!!) and 14 races to get a fastest lap before his Uncle

  8. Sainz’s have now won in four different decades.

    Acropolis rally 1990
    Cypros rally 2000
    Renault 3.5 Monza 2014
    Silverstone 2022

  9. This reads nicely with those links

  10. Jelle van der Meer (@)
    7th July 2022, 10:49

    * Alonso has now the record for racing distance but not yet racing laps, that is still in the hands of Kimi. Kimi has raced 18,621 laps while Alonso is 72 laps behind with 18,549. The Austrian GP is 71 laps meaning Alonso will have to wait till at least Hungary before he claims the racing laps record.

    * With Russell, Guanya and Albon all retiring on the 1st lap of the British GP, which for all 3 was their 1st time they retired on lap 1, there is now only 1 driver left on the grid that never retired on lap 1, his name is Lando Norris. The all time record holder of most retirements on lap 1 is Jarno Trulli with 14.

    * By causing the 1st lap crash, Russell streak of (top 5) (point) finishes this season ends leaving no driver that has seen all finish flags this season.

    * Lewis did break another record, from Schumacher, and that is most podiums at a single race. Schumacher achieved 12 podiums at Imola, Barcelona and Montreal but Lewis has now scored 13 podiums at Silverstone.

    * Despite leading his first laps of 2022 and always performing well at Silverstone (13 podiums), Lewis is still not the driver with the most laps led at Silverstone, that honor is still with Jim Clark. Clark lead 365 laps versus Hamilton 342 lap

    * With Carlos winning the British GP the 2022 season is already less 1 sided than the 2014 season (last big rule change). In 2014 only 2 teams and 3 drivers won a race, so far in 2022 still only 2 teams but 4 drivers have won a race.

    * With Alonso’s 5th place finish he has now scored more than 2,000 points and is the 3rd driver in history to do so. Obviously the change in point system giving more points and to lower places has polluted this a lot in favor of younger drivers. Lewis is the only driver with more than 4,000 points after 8 dominant Mercedes years and Vettel has more than 3,000 points after 4 dominant years at Red Bull. Both Lewis and Vettel have only raced a few years under the previous point system.
    The next likely driver to reach 2,000 points is Verstappen although unlikely still in 2022 as he 264 points away with maximum 328 points left to score.

  11. As far as I could find, we have now for the second time in F1 history three point scorers among first-degree relatives (Michael, Ralf and Mick Schumacher).

    The first such trio were probably Wilson, Emerson and Christian Fittipaldi, also father, brother and son. (Emerson’s grandson Pietro started two races, but never scored points.)

    The Villeneuve and Winkelhock family had the same father–brother–son constellation of drivers entering races (Gilles, Jacques Sr. and Jacques; Manfred, Joachim and Markus Winkelhock), but Jacques Villeneuve Sr. and Joachim Winkelhock never started a race, and Markus Winkelhock did not score points in his one remarkable race.

    Then there are Jack, Gary and David Brabham (father, son, son), but Gary and David never scored points. (Gary never started a race.)

    There might be other instances, I only went through father–son pairs.

    1. Villeneuve and Winkelhock family —>
      Villeneuve and Winkelhock families

  12. Jonathan Parkin
    7th July 2022, 11:48

    Nicola Larini unfortunately got his first points in the 1994 San Marino GP. He would only score one more at Australia in 1997

  13. I believe he’s the first Junior to win a Grand Prix…
    (Although I’m not going to go checking every F1 winner’s dad’s name! It’s possible I’ve missed one, especially among the Indy 500 winners in the fifties. Nelson Piquet Jr never won a race for himself…)

    That number 47 stat’s a great one from deep inside your anorak!

    1. Jacques Villeneuve. Although Sr. is his uncle.

      1. Yes, your comment made me think before posting, but the Jacques we all know and somebody must love wasn’t known in racing as Jr, and as you say Big Jacques wasn’t Wee Jacques’ dad.

        1. Huge JV fan here and of course he is not a junior as his Dad’s name is Gilles.

          1. Yep, but my understanding is that Jacques Villeneuve the Younger is named after his uncle, so the “Sr.” in the latter’s name probably refers to the relationship to his nephew. But I’m not 100% sure. (Just had a scroll through my paper copy of Gerald Donaldson’s biography of Gilles Villeneuve, but I couldn’t find the passage I was looking for — how could we ever live without search function?)

        2. Well, one might argue that in the official FIA entry list, last weekend’s race winner ain’t no Jr. either: https://www.fia.com/events/fia-formula-one-world-championship/season-2022/2022-fia-formula-one-world-championship-entry.
          But I do appreciate, of course, that the man is commonly known as Carlos Sainz Jr. (Whereas not many might refer to the second-place driver as Sergio Pérez Mendoza.)

          1. or write the final point-scorer’s name in red.

    2. @bullfrog George Flaherty jr. won the 1957 Indy 500 but he raced under the name Pat. The first junior to win an F1 race was Phil Hill at the 1960 Italian Grand Prix.

      1. Dammit, how did I miss a great champion like Phil Hill?!

  14. Kind of obvious but the Sainz family presumably are the only name to win in F1 and WRC.

  15. First time since 2012 (Alonso for Ferrari) that Mercedes have not been fastest in Q3 in Silverstone.

    5th time in the last 6 Silverstone races that Q3 has been decided by less than 0.075s.

    Mercedes’ first DNF this season. They still have not had a mechanical DNF in 2022; Red Bull are the only team without a non-mechanical DNF this season.

    Russell’s first no-score this season. Verstappen now has the longest unbroken points-scoring streak (7 races, last no-score was Australia).

    13th consecutive season in which Hamilton has managed at least 1 fastest lap.

    2nd consecutive race in which a driver making his 150th start won from pole.

    2 of the last 4 red flags have been due to Mick Schumacher crashing and damaging a guard rail, and the other 2 have come after multi-car crashes involving George Russell.

    100% of Sainz’s World Championship race victories have been in red-flagged races – he shares this distinction with Johnnie Parsons (Indy 500), Jochen Mass, Vittorio Brambilla, Pierre Gasly, and Esteban Ocon.

    First time that two consecutive races at the same circuit have been red-flagged since Canada 1997 and 1998. First time since Italy 1994 and 1995 that both races were restarted/resumed.

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

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