Rosberg keeps Hamilton waiting for first Brazil win

2015 Brazilian Grand Prix stats and facts

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Nico Rosberg is having a fine end to the season, with two wins and five pole positions in a row.

The latter is a personal best for him and is something only 11 other drivers have done – one of which was Lewis Hamilton earlier this year.

Win number 44 for Mercedes was not taken by their car number 44: Rosberg’s 13th career victory puts him level with Alberto Ascari and David Coulthard. He also set his 21st pole position.

Hamilton beat him to fastest lap, however, taking his 27th. It was also his seventh fastest lap of the year, meaning he now has a clean sweep of the pole position and fastest lap trophies to go with his world championship.

Sebastian Vettel took third place, meaning he shared the podium with the Mercedes drivers for the ninth time this year.

Massa mimicked Senna’s 1988 disqualification at home
Rosberg also became the first driver this year to win a race with a three-stop strategy, and the first in ten years to take back-to-back Brazilian Grand Prix victories. Juan Pablo Montoya was the last driver to do this, winning in 2004 for Williams and 2005 for McLaren.

Despite having started from the front row four times at Interlagos, Brazil remains one of few events on the current calendar where Hamilton is yet to win, along with Austria and Mexico. Before the race he said he wanted to win as a “salute” to his hero Ayrton Senna.

Mercedes therefore equalled their record of taking 11 one-two finishes in a season, which they set last year, and can beat it in Abu Dhabi. That is also the only way they can surpass their record team points total of 701, which they also set last year.

With one race left to run the top three places in the drivers’ championship cannot change and nor can the top five positions in the constructors’ championship. This will remain the case regardless of with Felipe Massa’s eighth place is reinstated.

Massa became the first driver to be disqualified from the results of the a since Daniel Ricciardo was stripped of second place following the Australian Grand Prix last year. The last Brazilian driver to be disqualified in his home race was Senna in 1988, when he changed his car after the green flag following a gearbox failure.

Force India are therefore confirmed in fifth place – the highest they have finished since the team entered F1 in 2008. They only did better than that on two occasions when they were Jordan: fourth in 1998 and third in 1999. They also finished fifth in their first year of competition in F1, 1991.

Nico Hulkenberg equalled his best starting and finishing positions of the year, fifth and sixth respectively, the same he scored in Austria.

Max Verstappen has scored points in the last six consecutive races – the most of any driver at the moment. His team mate Carlos Sainz Jnr was not classified due to a technical failure for the seventh time this year – the most of any driver.

Guess who’s had the most penalties so far?
And speaking of unwanted records, with one race to go Pastor Maldonado has regained the lead spot in the ‘most driver penalties’ table. He picked up his eighth of the year after tangling with Marcus Ericsson.

Review the year so far in statistics here:

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

2015 Brazilian 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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46 comments on “Rosberg keeps Hamilton waiting for first Brazil win”

  1. Sainz is so unlucky, you have to feel bad for him in his rookie year. I hope both TR have better engines in 2016 and can fight with the force india’s for place nr 5, or even better.

    1. Next year in Brazil, he will still be a rookie if this goes on.

  2. Verstappen is the first Toro Rosso driver ever to score 6 consecutive point finishes. The current car is really good, such a shame for Sainz that his car is so unreliable.

    1. Verstappen is the first Toro Rosso driver ever to score 6 consecutive point finishes.

      Not just that, it is the first time the team scores 6 consecutive points finishes (as I’ve put in another post down here) :)

    2. Looking onboard with Max, it looks so mighty in the corners. Part of that might also be him though.

    3. It’s a bit like saying Vettel has overall more points than Alonso. Different points systems. Vettel had a better run at the end of ’07. It’s just that he had 1 race without points in between, but he would get points with the current version.

  3. Nico Rosberg is now tied with DC for second most wins for a non champion, three more till Moss. This is the second time Rosberg wins consecutive races and he also becomes only the 14th driver in history to ever score 5 poles or more in a row.

    Hamilton can no longer equal Schumacher and Vettel their record of 13 wins in a season, but still equal their record for 17 podiums in a season, if he finishes on the podium in Abu Dhabi.

    1. @xtwl
      One more stat about Rosberg which completely slipped my attention until now:

      http://www.statsf1.com/en/statistiques/pilote/entete/tour.aspx

      He becomes the 18th driver in F1 history to lead over 1000 laps. Moss is the only other non-WDC to have lead more laps.

  4. Max Verstappen has scored points in the last six consecutive races – the most of any driver at the moment.

    Interestingly, this is the first time ever that Toro Rosso has managed to score points in six consecutive races. Their previous record streak was five point-scoring finishes in a row (Germany – China ’08 including the win at Italy).

    This run extends to the Minardi team as well. Although to be fair Minardi once got 6 top-10 finishes in a row (Europe – France ’93), a good while before points were attributed to places 7-10.

    1. (Germany – China ’08 including the win at Italy)

      Umm, the race after China `08 was Brazil ’08 and Toro Rosso scored points there too. So shouldn’t that streak be 6 races?

      1. Yeah I didn’t look too well when writing down the stat. That should be Europe ’08 – Japan ’08, but definitely 5 races, not more.

    2. But, Vettel in STR had 7 top-10 finishes in a row actually. He had 1 1st, 1 4th, 2 5th, 2 6th and 1 9th. But he was not given points for the 9th as that was the points system at the time. Verstappen had 6 top-10 finishes in a row so far. It was 1 4th, 1 8th, 3 9th, 1 10th.

  5. Nico Rosberg now has just one pole position less than Fernando Alonso. Both Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton can surpass their (skewed by double points in Hamilton’s case) points tally from 2014, but only victory will do so.

    Max Verstappen can equal the record number of consecutive races in the top 10 whilst driving a Toro Rosso next time out at Abu Dhabi. Sebastian Vettel (unsurprisingly) currently holds this record. Toro Rosso’s personal best streak of having at least one car in the top ten extends from Germany 2008 until China 2009 (10 races).

    Will Stevens beat Alexander Rossi for the first (and what will be the only time this season) time in a race.

    Same top six as Japan, with the only change in position being the two Mercedes drivers swapped around.

    Fernando Alonso finished 15th for the first time in his career. Daniil Kvyat finished seventh for the first time in his career.

    Only Lewis Hamilton (66pts currently), Sebastian Vettel (131pts currently) and Max Verstappen (31pts currently) are guaranteed to finish ahead of their team mates in the championship. However Bottas (19pts ahead), Perez (16pts ahead), Grosjean (22pts ahead) and Nasr (18pts ahead) all seem highly likely to beat their respective team mates this year. It’s still wide open at Red Bull (10pts in Kvyat’s favour), McLaren (5pts in Button’s favour) and Manor (Merhi ahead on countback) though.

    1. Good stats
      But for Merhi to be displaced Stevens needs to finish 13th which is highly unlikely…

  6. My favorite stat of the weekend (which I read elsewhere on this site):
    Nico Rosberg has now tied Aryton Senna for the same amount of wins in Brazil- 2.
    How I wish that Brundle had brought that one up on the podium just to see Lewis Hamilton’s expression.

    1. +++1 !! Hamiton was looking to celebrate if he “emulated” Senna in winning in Brazil, yet so many other drivers have won since Senna won in Brazil, and none of them care to judge them selves against Senna. For Hamilton, so obsessed with Senna, it must be completely embarrassing to be beaten twice in a row by a teammate at Senna’s home track. Hamilton is definitely no “Ayrton Senna” – Ayrton didn’t get beaten by Prost to 5 poles in a row for instance, so the self propogated comparisons by Hamilton need to STOP.

      1. Do you even know what “comparison” means?

        1. From my point of view this was a perfect and true use of the word “comparison”

  7. One interesting stat that I noticed: Vettel has scored 266 points so far. That’s 10 points more than what he scored in 2010, when he won the championship. He won his third championship in 2012 with 281 points, so if Vettel finishes third in Abu Dhabi he will score exactly the same number of points of 2012. It’s not very surprising because 2010 and 2012 were very close.
    Obviously he will never reach his score in 2011 and 2013: 392 and 397 points respectively. But it’s interesting to notice that Hamilton, with a more dominant car, won’t get more than 388 points this year. Obviously he had a tougher competition from his team mate compared to Vettel, but still, interesting fact.

    1. @yobo01 Surely the competition Vettel had to face in 2011 was bigger than Hamilton now. Vettel had both McLarens, a Ferrari and sometimes a Red Bull to fight with.

      1. @xtwl I agree. I was talking about the competition from their team mates because it’s the only way I can explain why Hamilton is going to score less points compared to Vettel in 2011 and 2013. When Mercedes dominates Rosberg and Hamilton are fairly close to each other. When Red Bull dominated in 2011 and 2013 Vettel was almost always ahead of Webber.

    2. @yobo01 Vettel has also scored more podiums this year than in 2010 and 2012 respectively.

  8. I don’t have the time to check on this fact now, but someone said that Mercedes have now the most front row starts in a season (31 out of possible 36 so far) by a team.

  9. In 16 out of the 18 races in 2015 so far, the driver who has lead at the end of lap 1 has won the races.

    During the Schumacher domination era, it was not this predictable. Only on 10 out of 17 occasions in 2002 and 10 out of 18 occasions in 2004 did the driver leading on lap 1 win the race.

    The lowest number of drivers leading on the end of lap 1 and still winning the race was 2003, where this was the case in only 6 out of 16 occasions. Coincidentally (or not), 2003 is also regarded as one of the best seasons of all time.

    1. @kingshark In 2015 that is Malaysia and Sochi then?

      1. @xtwl
        Malaysia and Monaco. I completely forgot about Sochi, so that would be 15 out of 18 then.

        1. @kingshark To what extent does Sochi really count anyway, but you took the figures for the entire season so…

    2. @kingshark It’s a very interesting stat. but I disagree it was unpredictable. In fact it was extremely predictable – A Ferrari nearly always won. 2002 stats were skewed by the fact Montoya got 7 poles in a row in the Williams but it was as predictable as the sun rising that Schumacher would win since Williams had rubbish race pace and was unreliable besides. Indeed Montoya hasn’t converted any of his poles into wins. Mclaren was more reliable but slow. 2004 stats were skewed by the fact Ferrari intentionally designed their car to be gentle on its tires in an era of fueled qualy as qualy was much less important. But in the race they were a second/ lap faster than anyone else and predictably won. Watching 2002 and 2004 was like watching paint dry or worse. The only reason I hadn’t stopped being an F1 fan then was because 2003, indeed a fantastic season was tucked in between. But in over 20 years of watching F1 these 2 seasons were def. the worst. I vividly remember the feeling of despair and wondering why am I wasting my time on this? I’ve had the same feeling a few times since then but never to the same extent

      1. @montreal95
        I would beg to differ. There were a handful of exciting races in 2004. Monaco, Belgium, Monza and Brazil all come to mind. Likewise, there were also some good races in 2002, like Australia, Malaysia, Monaco, France, Silverstone, and Monza. I felt that both 2002 and 2004 were more interesting to watch than 2015.

        1. @kingshark These are all details. In every season there are some good races, and we could argue all the way into the winter which had more-2015 or 2002/2004. Main point is-it was as predictable as 2015 if not more, unless some unexpected factor intervened like weather in Spa 2004. And the stats you’d brought are skewed as I’d mentioned in the above comment to seem that it was less predictable when in fact that wasn’t the case

    3. yes, this shows that f1 has got too predicatable. in 2004, we more more glued to the screen hoping for a different result, the racing was better because of the car specs and engine specs. so even when it was a precession it was exciting to watch. also, even though racing was predicatable in 2004, we were just getting used to it, now we are too used to it.

      1. @kpcart Please speak for yourself(no “we”). My experience of 2004 was very different than yours. I’d enjoyed it even less than 2015. Saying “we were just getting used to the racing being predictable” has the exact opposite meaning than what you said. Surely if you’re used to racing being unpredictable then if it’s become predictable then you hate it even more, than if you’ve survived as an F1 fan well into the predictable racing era such as now?

      1. Completely forgot about that one too.

  10. Hamilton seemed to just be having a bit of a paddy at the end of the race on the podium. I know he’s tried to win at Brazil 9 times now but Rosberg did win fair and square. Could have at least congratulated him.

  11. sucked in Lewis “wannabe Senna” Hamilton. hopeless at the pure driver tracks like Monaco and Interlagos.

    1. Haha yeah Hungay would debunk that myth

    2. Conveniently forgetting the win that was thrown away this year at Monaco. it’s hard when you hate someone but try being a little more objective.

  12. 11th race in a row the fastest lap is taken by one of the podium finishers
    the first and only time this had happened before was from Belgium 1963 to Netherlands 1964

  13. Vettel has 79 podiums, the same as Raikkonen, and 1 less than Senna.

  14. Rosberg’s five poles in a row shares a record in consecutive poles by non-champions: others to achieve it are Stirling Moss (1959-60) and Juan Pablo Montoya (2002)

  15. Hamilton’s 4th fastest lap in Brazil – equals Italy.

    2nd race in a row that Rosberg has led 65 laps and Hamilton has led the other 6.

    Felipe Nasr was the only non-Ferrari driver to run either 3rd or 4th at any point during the race, and the only non-Finnish driver to run 5th at any point.

    Each of the top 5 in the race has finished in that position at least 5 times this season.

    And some more from magnetimarelli.com:

    13th front-row lockout for Mercedes this year – beats last year’s record of 12.

    Worst starting position at Interlagos for Alonso – even in his Minardi year he managed 19th.

    5th time this year that Mercedes have locked out the front row, led the entire race, scored a 1-2, and finished 1-2 in the fastest laps table. This is the most any team has done this in 1 season – McLaren in 1988 only managed 4.

    11th time that the F1 W06 Hybrid has managed pole, fastest lap and win in the same race – equals Ferrari 500 (and that was from 1952-56).

    Rosberg is only the second driver to manage back-to-back wins from pole in Interlagos (after Hakkinen in 1998-99).

    13th podium for Vettel this year – the most for a driver in his first season with Ferrari.

    Vettel’s 7th 3rd-place finish this year – equals Webber in 2011.

    Bottas’s 6th 5th-place finish this year – equals de Angelis in 1985 and Massa in 2011.

    Raikkonen has scored points in every Brazilian GP that he has competed in since 2003 (he did not compete in 2010, 2011, or 2013).

    First time since 2006 that the Enstone team have scored with both cars in Brazil.

    First time Alonso has finished the race behind his team-mate in Brazil.

  16. By not taking victory in Interlagos, Hamilton cannot end the season with a higher wins/starts percentage than Vettel even if he wins the final race of the season, currently very close between them however

  17. I have a suggestion on how front wings should be modified to allow closer follow up
    of the preceding car.

    While front wings in the wind tunnel are tested for their ability to generate downforce with
    a stream of air parallel to the center line of the vehicle, they fail to take into account the fact
    that the preceding car leaves a pair of vortices that generate flows parallel to the ground but
    at (almost) right angles to the centerline of the car or road.

    These vortices at ground level are going toward the outside of the road and at velocities much
    higher than the apparent wind generated by the vehicles motion. Therefore the current wings become useless while following a competitor.

    What is needed is a piece of airfoil with the edges parallel to the centerline of the car on both
    front wings so that advantage can be taken of the prevailing flow while closely following a competitor.

    The leading edges would face each other toward the center line of the car while the trailing
    edges would face outward with the angles of attack adjusted to generate downforce from the
    vortex flow rushing towards the edges of the road.

    I hereby submit this suggestion with the hope that all would implement it, as this would generate
    closer racing, IMHO-

  18. Hamilton is a victim of himself.

    Nico is a married and settled down man. Disciplined life. Sleeps plenty and I guess, well.

    Same goes for Vettel.

    Hamilton however, jetting to and from continents like a crazed bat, partying all night, splitting himself in a thousand interests and endeavours is losing focus and the tiny edge that separates
    genial drivers from average but well focused competitors.

    I thought his Sunday night accident would shake and sober him up some. And I sincerely hope
    he goes back to the spartan way of life that would keep him keen and honed.

    Otherwise, he will go down the drain the Kimi Raikkonen way.

    A victim of his own success.

    It will be difficult for Mercedes to keep the edge they have on their competitors. Others will improve and close the gap. To be the next WDC, will require winning every race one’s marque wins. Because, certainly, Mercedes is probably not going to be as comparatively strong as it has been the past two years.

    And then, others like Verstappen will leave no stone unturned until they become WDCs. Probably Pascal Wehrlein will be called upon to try his hands at F1? Danyil Kvyat with a good engine in the Red Bull will be a tough nut to crack next season.

    Things will not be easy.

    Booze, women, music, nightlife, jet-lag are bad cocktail ingredients for a wannabe Champ.

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