2008 Hungarian Grand Prix stats

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Timo Glock got to spray the champagne for the first time in his F1 career

There were plenty of first in the Hungarian Grand Prix – a first time winner and a new face on the podium.

Here’s a round-up of those and all the other interesting stats from the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Heikki Kovalainen scored his first career Grand Prix victory – and became the 100th driver to score a win in an F1 world championship race.

He is the fourth Finnish driver to win an F1 race, joining Keke Rosberg, Mika Hakkinen and Kimi Raikkonen, all of whom were also world champions. It was the 43rd win for a Finnish driver, putting them level with Italy, fifth on the list of countries with the most wins.

It was only the second time Kovalainen has finished on the podium for McLaren – the first being his third place in Malaysia. And it was his first win in any category since the 2005 Italian GP2 feature race.

Timo Glock scored a career-best second place and Toyota’s best finish since Jarno Trulli at Bahrain in 2005. It was Toyota’s third second place, they are yet to win a Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton achieved his tenth career pole position giving him as many as 1970 world champion Jochen Rindt.

Despite the spectacular efforts of Massa’s engine, a Ferrari power plant finished in the points for the 46th race in a row, courtesy of Kimi Raikkonen’s car. That’s the third-longest points-scoring streak for an F1 engine, tied with Renault (Monaco ’91-Brazil ’94).

Ferrari already holds second place in this list (55, Malaysia ’99-Malaysia ’03) but the absolute record is huge: from Canada ’67 to Netherlands ’83 a Ford engine was in the points in each of the 228 rounds. Assuming a 19-race calendar from next year onwards it’ll be 2018 before Ferrari can hope to match that.

Kimi Raikkonen moved ahead of Felipe Massa in the drivers’ championship. But were F1 still using the last points system (10-6-4-3-2-1 instead of 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1) Raikkonen would still be third (see graph). Under the current points system, Raikkonen has 13 points more than he would have previously, whereas Massa and Hamilton are each eight points better off.

Average starting positions

Massa has the best average starting position so far despite McLaren’s recent run of form. The biggest gaps between team mates are Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet Jnr (Alonso 7.1 places better), Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld (Kubica 4.37 places better), Mark Webber and David Coulthard (Webber 4.18 places better).

Felipe Massa 3.09
Lewis Hamilton 4.00
Kimi Raikkonen 4.27
Robert Kubica 4.45
Heikki Kovalainen 4.64
Fernando Alonso 6.45
Jarno Trulli 7.73
Mark Webber 7.91
Nick Heidfeld 8.82
Timo Glock 11.55
David Coulthard 12.09
Nico Rosberg 12.18
Jenson Button 13.27
Nelson Piquet Jnr 13.55
Rubens Barrichello 13.91
Sebastian Vettel 13.91
Kazuki Nakajima 15.09
Sebastien Bourdais 16.45
Giancarlo Fisichella 18.27
Adrian Sutil 19.09
Takuma Sato 20.50
Anthony Davidson 21.00

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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22 comments on “2008 Hungarian Grand Prix stats”

  1. Heikki became also another current driver who scored his maiden win in Hungary after Alonso in 2003 (if my memory serves me right) and Button in 2006.

    Heidfeld finished the race yet again, the only driver this season yet to record DNF

    Piquet remains the only driver yet to outqualify his team mate this season

    P.S. sorry about the Live Blog on Sunday, my laptop went on strike …

  2. No problem Milos, wondered where you were!

  3. Heikki,

    was the 7th consecutive winner of the hungarian Grand prix.

  4. Also regarding heikki’s past wins, didn’t heikki win the race of champions in England at the end of 2006 or 2007? Doesn’t really count I suppose but he’s at least won something since 2005! :)

  5. Kovalainen won the Race of Champions in 2004: Heikki Kovalainen biography.

    But like you say it’s not really a race, more of an entertainment event like the Goodwood Festival. he did it again in ’05 but was knocked out in the semi-finals.

  6. That’s funny how Massa has the best average starting position but yet, a lot of people here still rate him as a sub par driver. Even going as far as rating him the #4 driver in the comparison, putting Kubica ahead of him. Please if it were not for reliability issues and ill fate, he would be way ahead in the points right now. In my mind he’s tied for #1 with Hamilton and the stats prove my point!!!

    When I talk about reliability Hungary and Canada come to mind. I mean yeah he had that really bad race in England but everyone has a bad day. Rating him as #4 is just not a fair statement at all especially if you look at the numbers which obviously wasn’t the case. That whole article about driver comparison sounded more like a who’s my favorite drivers article to me.

    We’ll see come November and Massa is kissing that championship trophy in his home land, it will be sweet and all the doubters will finally realize.

  7. Fernando do you mean this article: Which F1 drivers do you like? (Poll). Because the point of that was which drivers people like, not who they think is best.

    He was unlucky yesterday, certainly, but I still think his team mate’s had more misfortune – Canada and France for example (and arguably Britain as well).

  8. Love the stats Keith. Especially the graph showing how the standings would be markedly different using the older systems…

  9. Thanks Dorian. You can read more of the same stats for the seasons going back to 1992 here: F1 season statistics

  10. “He is the fourth Finnish driver to win an F1 race, joining Keke Rosberg-…”

    Question: Isn’t Nico considered German? Not that it really matters what he is, but I assume he is both Finnish and German but was raised in Germany?

    Unless his mother had a run in with a very fast milk man…

  11. No Keith I meant that series of articles that put Massa as the #4 driver in F1 right now.

  12. Great job Keith;
    “The biggest gaps between team mates are Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet Jnr (Alonso 7.1 places better)”
    Now i would like to see Beckem telling us again that Nesinho has “outperformed” (is this the right word?) Alonso again…
    Thanks for your work :-)

  13. Like I said before about Nelsinho, Timo Glock is the fifth GP2 graduate (yeah, he’s been an F1 driver before that, but I’m counting him as a ‘graduate’ anyway, because he’s had very few starts in 2004) to step on the Formula 1 Podium, and now only Kazuki Nakajima is missing…

  14. Dan M, Nico was born in Germany & thus is ‘officially’ German despite the fact that he has never really lived there and was raised in Monaco.

    I am not sure if he is considered a dual Finnish citizen because of his parentage – some countries do even if you were born elsewhere.
    If not, then I would suggest it is a stretch to consider Nico Finnish at all.

  15. Dan M and Pink Peril, Nico holds dual nationality. He’s thus half Finnish and half German but doesn’t speak Finnish. He raced under Finnish licence in the lower series but in GP2 he had to choose one of his nationalities thus the German flag is raised if he happens to get to the podium. He said himself in an interview by Helsingin sanomat (a Finnish newspaper) in 2005:

    “I’ve noticed that there is something missing, something that for instance the Brazilian drivers have when they come up to the podium to celebrate their victory with the Brazilian flag

    It would be nice if I felt the same way. When my win here was celebrated with the playing of the German national anthem, it felt kind of weird to me.

    I don’t have that sense of belonging, either to Germany or to Finland. Maybe when I’m driving races I sort of feel a stronger pull towards Finland, since it reminds me of my father’s achievements in the sport.

    (In GP2) I had to choose one of my nationalities. Since I am a driver who does not have any big corporate sponsors behind me, it is easier to get into Formula One if you are seen to come from a big country the size of Germany.

    Still, it’s a great situation that in Germany I’m regarded as German, and in Finland as a Finn. And it’s quite right, too, since I am my father’s son.”

  16. Pink Peril, nationality is based on parentage, not where you were born. Otherwise my mother would be German, even though she has only every been there for less than a month in her entire life, and the rest of our family are British born and bred.

  17. Fernando – Ah you mean this article: 2008 half-term driver rankings part 2. Well, that was my assessment of him after the first nine rounds (before Germany and Hungary) and I stand by it. But the article was clearly an assessment of how well I thought each driver had done and not about which ones I like – if you go back and look at all three parts of it (here’s part 1 and=”/2008/07/11/2008-half-term-driver-rankings-part-3/”>part 3) I don’t see how you can think otherwise.

    Daniel – Also Scott Speed came to F1 from GP2 but never got on the podium.

  18. “… driver who scored his maiden win in Hungary after Alonso in 2003 […] and Button in 2006” (milos).

    Although retired, it was also the case for Damon Hill (in 1993).

  19. Kester: “nationality is based on parentage, not where you were born”

    This is not true everywhere. Most of the European countries do that (Spain and Italy for sure), but also in most of the Latinamerican countries we do the opposite: if you are born in Argentina, you are Argentinean (or at least, you can ask to be). It all comes down to the big emigrations at the beginning of the XXth century: to Europe was better to keep their emigrated population as citizens, to America was better to gain new citizens…

  20. Guille2306 / Kester: To elaborate on your debate. Nationality is arguably where you spent the majority of your youth (a great indicator this is your accent). It is the country you call your home.

    e.g. You were born in Iceland but when you were 6 months old your parents moved to Italy. You’re now 20 years old: You still live in Italy, you speak Italian, you were educated in Italy and you’ve spent the last 19.5 years of your life in Italy. Your Nationality is Italian! Sure you might be able to get an Icelandic passport but that doesn’t change the fact than in ‘real terms’…..you’re Italian. However regarding your ethnicity/heritage, assuming your parents were Icelandic and maybe their parents before them…then you can say that your ethnicity/creed is Icelandic…

    I was born in New Zealand and have spent the majority of my life in NZ. Though I’m half Danish, quarter English and quarter Irish. I have an Irish passport and an NZ passport. But I’m a Kiwi, a New Zealander…that’s my Nationality. But my mixed European blood-line is my ethnicity/heritage.

  21. Dorian: oh, I totally agree with you, I was just talking about the “legal” side. I was born in Italy and spent all my life since I was 3 month old in Argentina, but I didn’t get my Argentinean nationality until I was 18 just because those 3 months abroad :-)
    But I am AND feel Argentinean.

    Anyway, going back to Nico’s nationality: he is what he feels he is (and it seems he has chosen Germany for economical reasons :-( …)

  22. Guille2306: Wicked!!…..Italian Argentinian, fantastic!!

    At the end of the day we each have the right to identify ourselves with whichever country we want really….

    I guess with Nico it’s:

    Nationality: German
    Ethnicity: Finnish

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