F1 Fanatic

To comemorate the, in my view, remarkable achievement this week of Fernando Alonso entering on the TOP 5 of the all-important table “Grand Prix Wins”, 5th place ex-aequo with sir Jackie Stewart (27), I decided to open this thread. The idea is to post/comemorate current and past remarkable achievements (mostly past, I reckon), achievements that can be in any shape or form, of your favorite or not so favorite driver or team. The only condition is to be something in F1 that you recolect well and ackowledge as an achievement worthy of mentioning. So, for example, a post could be

” Having completed recently 24 years old, I want to recall the amazing achievement Sebastian Vettel did on the 2008 Italian Grand Prix. The German driver that was already reckoned as a young charger and a superstar of the future champion-to-be, and nicknamed “baby Schumacher” due to his young age, performances and nationality, achieved 2 important records that he won’t be able to break again due to their nature. He became the youngest driver ever to get a pole-position on a Grand Prix on that Saturday. The next day he converted the pole into a spectacular racing win, breaking that record too, the youngest driver ever to win a GP, with 21 years and 74 days.
Today he has 15 meaningful records attributed by wikipedia, eleven of which are of the “youngest” kind. 1 had to be his because he’s the only champion since the new points system (most points in a season) and the other 3 are relative to this season Vettel’s form. He’s set to break the great Schumacher’s records, and he’s proving to more and more people that they might fall sooner than everybody would have imagined. Remarkable.”

Ok, I wanted also to underline Fernando Alonso deed last Sunday. Ahead of him, only the great Nigel Mansell and the superlegends Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Michael Schumacher. He also has only 9 and a half seasons in the game. Where will he arrive? Mansell’s 4th place can fall this season, if the Ferrari’s pace in the last race is not misleading. I reckon that he, before Vettel will be the one to kick Senna’s from the top 3. Prost is further away, but is in reach if the Ferrari becomes on the next season class-of-the field as it was the last decade.

Now your turn, remarkable achievements on the history of Formula One:

Sure, it’s your criteria. Achievement, maybe I should have used Accomplishment. Narain also this season, in Valencia, just before the end of his career accomplished the remarkable feat of being the only/first GP driver finishing a race in 24th position. How lucky is that?

Michael Schumacher finishing on the podium in every race in 2002, with only one third place.

Remains to be seen whether Vettel can do the same or beat that.

Leading the race two laps into your career by driving the slowest car on the grid, by Markus Winkelhock.

It happened 4 years ago and with the Nurburgring weather Ricciardo could do something similar!

My favourite one was Alonso’s pole at Malaysia in 2003, at the time the youngest ever. He was the first of the really ‘young’ and successful drivers, along with Raikkonen.

@Todfod Yep, they knew he wouldn’t have a chance to even score points in the dry, so they took another gamble with another set of wets, unfortunately it didn’t work out. Imagine it wouldn’t stop raining and they would just finish the race under red flag and award half points. Winkelhock would win in his first ever race, driving the slowest car. And would probably still get dropped for Yamamoto’s money.

We all know Ferrari have won roughly 25% of all the races they’ve entered and therefore a quarter of all F1 races since the sport began – however, take the Michael Schumacher out of the equation and they’d barely get into the top 8 teams in terms of win percentage. I’m not sure how good an observation that is, and I think most people know that. But hey ho.