Hamilton closes on Schumacher with fifth Canada win

2016 Canadian Grand Prix stats and facts

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Lewis Hamilton took his fifth victory at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve yesterday.

It moved him closer to the record of Michael Schumacher, the most successful F1 driver at the Canadian circuit, who won there seven times. Schumacher holds the record for most wins at the same venue three times over, with seven wins in Montreal and Imola, and an outright record of eight at Magny-Cours.

Hamilton’s 45th career win was the 51st for Mercedes, which draws them level with Red Bull.

Hamilton recorded his 53rd career pole position on Saturday. He is no longer able to equal Schumacher’s all-time record of 68 pole positions this year but he could reach Ayrton Senna’s former record of 65 before the end of the season if he takes pole for at least 12 of the remaining 14 races. Similarly, six more wins this year will see Hamilton tie with Alain Prost as the second-most successful grand prix driver in terms of race victories.

Hamilton’s pole position time of 1’12.812 was 0.537 seconds slower than the fastest lap ever seen on this configuration of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. That was the 1’12.275 set by Ralf Schumacher in a Williams-BMW during Q2 in 2004.

Jacques Villeneuve: Canada’s last home racer
Nico Rosberg took his 13th front row in a row, setting a new personal best. He also took the 17th fastest lap of his career equalling Rubens Barrichello.

However both Mercedes drivers lost places on the first lap of the race. This team have been the worst starters of the season so far, with Hamilton and Rosberg making a net loss of 15 positions on the first lap of races so far this year – not to mention their disastrous collision in Spain.

Felipe Massa’s retirement from the race means no driver will be able to score points in every race this year. Daniel Ricciardo sustained his perfect record of out-qualifying his team mate at every race.

The Canadian Grand Prix saw a packed crowd despite the fact ten years have passed since the last time a home driver appeared on the grid. That was Jacques Villeneuve, who spun out of the race in his BMW with 12 laps to go.

Since then the only Canadian driver to appear in an official F1 session is Robert Wickens, who drove for Virgin during first practice for the 2011 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

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Review the year so far in statistics here:

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

2016 Canadian Grand Prix

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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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46 comments on “Hamilton closes on Schumacher with fifth Canada win”

  1. I don’t think Hamilton will get there. I see him sitting out his current contract and then retiring, so that’s at the end of 2018. Sure, he could win 2016-2018 Canadian GPs on a streak but I see him stopping at 5 or 6.

    1. @chrischrill

      This is their life, I think all the drivers will love to stay in the sport for as long as possible, no early retirement if the fire is still strong and I noticed how excited Hamilton was to be in a fight with Vettel.

      1. @xusen sure but how motivated will he be if wins WDC this year too when he surpasses his hero Senna? 2018 is a long way away, it’s 2.5 seasons.

    2. with a bit of better luck he could have won 8 out of the nine he has done already
      2008 – crashes into kimi in pits when in the leading group
      2011 – tries to pass button – gets put in wall – button wins
      2014 – both mercedes suffer technical gremlins when running one – two

      1. 2008 wasn’t luck. Hamilton just made a silly mistake and took Raikkonen and himself out of the race. And I find it pretty funny that Rosberg crashed into the back of Hamilton in that incident too.

        1. @ultimateuzair The actual crash itself was 100% Hamilton’s fault, but I guess the point is that he was leading the race comfortably until the safety car (first bit of bad luck) and then his pit stop was slower than others meaning he ended up behind Raikkonen (second bit of bad luck) which led to the incident (Hamilton’s fault).

  2. Vettel and Kimi tie again on podiums at 83. If Vettel does not finish on the podium in Baku he will have an exact 50% rate of podiums in his career. Both are 9 shy of Hamilton (whom also has a 53% podium finishes), and 14 of Alonso. With 14 races to go Hamilton is likely to reach the century this season.

    Rosberg on the other hand is very certain on being the most succesful non champion however he’s a long way off Barichello his podium tally as a non-champion (45 to 68).

    1. Jonathan Parkin
      13th June 2016, 18:50

      When you talk about Alonso’s podiums do you mean top three finishes or number of occasions he stood on the podium – see Brazil 2003 for details!

      1. Lol. And Brazil 2015!

      2. And singapore 2008

  3. Both Mercedes and Red Bull drivers have the same number of pole positions as their team mate’s number of victories!

    1. So far this year lol

      1. Doesn’t this stat apply to every pair of drivers? Also it is very cool

        1. Hulk has a pole for a start…

          1. *sigh* No one cares about Hulks pole we are talking about this season

        2. Haha i suppose you could say that; everyone else has the same number of victories as their team mates have pole positions so far this year – zero! Quite cool that Merc and Red Bull drivers share those achieved statistics though :)

  4. “Hamilton’s 45th career win was the 51st for Mercedes. That draws them level with Red Bull once again – two races ago they were tied on 50 wins.”

    This can’t be correct. The last two races were won by Mercedes.

  5. MG421982 (@)
    13th June 2016, 12:41

    Great cars, champs with more races than ever… boom… he achieves in 9 years as much as others in 15 years.

    1. You mean more?

      Vettel and Hamilton are fast approaching Prost levels of wins.

      And prost is only second to Michael Schumacher.

      Whoom still has more than double their wins. Just amazing. Hamilton at his current rate needs 10 more full seasons to match MSC.

    2. more reason to look at the percentages and the head to he’d match ups, Prost was DEMOLISHED by Senna and it really wasn’t even close, but this was clouded by Senna’s bad luck.

      1. “Prost was DEMOLISHED by Senna”

        Even as a Senna fan I can’t agree with that. As team mates the score was 14-11 (in wins) to Senna which is hardly a demolition. You also can’t ignore the fact that Prost scored more points than Senna over the course of 1988 but lost out on the title due to the vagaries of the dropped scores rule.

      2. Prost was never DEMOLISHED by Senna, although Senna was demolished by Senna…

  6. “However both Mercedes drivers lost places on the first lap of the race. This team have been the worst starters of the season so far, with Hamilton and Rosberg making a net loss of 15 positions on the first lap of races so far this year”

    Although the stat is very much true, the conclusion is not really fair. When you start on the front row, you can’t gain places.

    1. The 2nd place driver can

  7. For the twelfth consecutive time Ferrari fail to win in Canada. This barren spell is second only to the famous 15 year drought in Monaco. Japan is 11 running years and it is likely that come October it will be 12 also. The significance of this stat is that these 3 races haven’t been won by Ferrari since the Schumacher glory days and they are the last 3 standing. US gp, Austrian gp and Mexican gp also haven’t been won but there have been only 5, 2 and 1 respectively.

  8. It’s a pointless stat if anyone knows it, but I’m still curious, when was the last time we saw a race as cold as this? Can’t remember the last time I saw temperatures around the 12C mark during a Grand Prix… I remember a race at the Nurburgring a few years back being fairly chilly but don’t know how it compares to yesterday’s race.

    1. Whereas I don’t know the answer to your question, here are the temperatures reported for the first three Montreal races, which took place in autumn:

      1978: 5 °C (8 October)
      1979: 16–17 °C (30 September)
      1980: 11 °C (28 September)
      (Source: Wikipedia and references therein)

      See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm1jBUfbLV0 (winter testing in Silverstone on 22 February 2005)

  9. Sergio Perez is the seventh driver to reach the 100th rece start in the Canadian GP . Other :
    Graham HILL- 1968 (the first ever )Jack BRABHAM 1968 Carlos REUTEMANN 1978 Niki LAUDA 1978 Pierluigi MARTINI 1994, Philippe ALLIOT 1993,

  10. Hamilton has now lead over 2,500 racing laps.

    Mercedes now have lead over 4,500 racing laps

  11. the speed of the pole lap is noteworthy. i was thinking the cars looked particularly fast on turn in though i suspect a lot of the speed is mid-corner and early straightline speed.

    1. Lets not forget the tyres and DRS which leads to this kind of laptimes.

  12. Hamilton and Vettel each have 1,974 career points.

  13. A little off topic but i never got a satisfying answer to this one:
    When discussing them nearly reaching 2004 laptimes, tv “expert” christian klien argued those cars had way more sophisticated aerodynamics. While I am sure that “more sophisticated” surely applies to todays aerodynamics rather than 2004’s, does anyone know how things look considering total downforce levels? My feeling would be teams long made up the losses imposed by the numerous aero-regulation changes and are now again well ahead of the downforce-levels 10 years ago or so. but does anyone know better?

    1. I don’t know 2004, but in 2008 THIS definitely looked complex enough to rival whatever modern aero

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Sauber_F1.08#/media/File:Robert_Kubica_2008_Canada_2.jpg

      1. I miss the horns.

    2. The 2004 cars had way more “efficient” aero he should have said, current cars probably have more down force, but they also make way more drag, but the new PU’s have way more torque than the v10s, so better low speed acceleration.

    3. Newey reckoned in 2014 that the 2010 Red Bull RB6 with double-diffuser probably had the most downforce of any F1 car of any era. Saying that, either Newey or Horner said last year (can’t find the reference) that they were close to regaining all of that downforce and predicted surpassing it this year, albeit on a heavier car.

      1. Paddy Lowe has also said in the team principals press conference at a recent race that the cars are “nearing historic downforce highs”.

        Klien probably meant that the 2004 cars produced more downforce than the 2016 cars, but they were far less restricted in how they could produce that downforce than they are today. So I would argue that the aero solutions of 2016 are “more sophisticated” than they were in 2004, but the cars probably don’t produce as much downforce (just).

  14. Canadian Grand Prix Victories:

    Lewis Hamilton – 5 (2007, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2016)
    All Other Active Drivers – 6 (Raikkonen 2005, Alonso 2006, Kubica 2008, Button 2011, Vettel 2013, Ricciardo 2014)

    Canadian Grand Prix Pole Positions:

    Lewis Hamilton – 5 (2007, 2008, 2010, 2015, 2016)
    All Other Active Drivers – 6 (Button 2005, Alonso 2006, Vettel 2011-13, Rosberg 2014)

    Since his début in 2007, Lewis Hamilton has taken 5 out of 9 victories and 5 out of 9 pole positions in Montréal, a strike rate of 55.56% at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

    1. @kodongo Kubica isn’t an active driver so in victories it’s 5-5

  15. 59th pole for Mercedes – back in front of Red Bull.

    First track at which Bottas has finished on the podium twice.

    Verstappen and Sainz (the 2 drivers who started this season at Toro Rosso) currently have 50 and 18 points – last season they finished with 49 and 18.

    5th time this year that Button has started 12th.

    First time Kvyat has started ahead of his team-mate this season.

    Mercedes are the only team without a mechanical DNF this season.

    Hamilton has 125 points in Canada – the most of anybody.

    34th time that Hamilton and Rosberg have shared the front row – same as Senna and Prost.

  16. Michael Brown (@)
    14th June 2016, 1:57

    First time Hamilton has won consecutive Canadian Grands Prix. Second time he took consecutive pole positions here – first time was 2007-2008.

  17. This was the 907th race before which Bernie cast doubt on the future of the event.

    1. I love this kind of stat.. lol

  18. Manan (@mananbond007)
    14th June 2016, 4:35

    F1 still playing catch up with the epic 2004 season. That year was quite imply a blur !!!

    1. Erm, the cars may have been impressive but the racing was pretty dull.

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