Still no back-to-back winners in 2017

2017 Hungarian Grand Prix stats and facts

Posted on

| Written by

Ferrari hit back at Mercedes in Hungary by taking their second one-two of 2017. Sebastian Vettel scored his 46th career win, meaning he has five more than Ayrton Senna and five less than Alain Prost.

Vettel’s victory means F1 heads into the summer break without any driver having scored back-to-back wins so far this season. That’s remarkable considering between them Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg won four races in a row on three separate occasions last year.

The last time the first 11 races of the year did not feature any back-to-back winners was in 2013. On that occasion Vettel also won the 11th race – and then went on to win all the remaining races that year!

Hamilton’s charitable act towards his team mate means Valtteri Bottas has now finished on the podium for the last five races in a row. It was the eighth podium finish of the year for Bottas, giving him as many as Vettel and two more than Hamilton.

Vettel and Bottas were separated at the flag by Raikkonen, who’s now finished in the top three 18 times since his last victory in the 2013 Australian Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen’s rash move on lap one meant his team mate’s pre-race prediction that he wouldn’t finish in his starting position of sixth came true, though not in the way he would have expected. This was a very static race for those who started higher up, however: the top five drivers on the grid all started where they finished.

Go ad-free for just £1 per month

>> Find out more and sign up

Felipe Massa’s absence from the Hungarian Grand Prix due to illness meant yesterday’s race was the first without a Brazilian driver for 35 years.

Number 40 made its first appearance for 28 years
Not since the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix, which several teams boycotted, has a race begun without a Brazilian driver in the field.

Paul di Resta’s arrival in the race provided plenty of meat for stats fans. He was the first driver to start a race using number 40 since Gabriele Tarquini qualified his AGS for the 1989 French Grand Prix.

Famously the number 40 was previously seen at the Hungaroring when Minardi allowed Chanoch Nissany to drive one of their cars during the first practice session in 2005. He was almost 13 seconds off the pace, and 6.7 seconds slower than team mate Christijan Albers.

Di Resta did incomparably better, qualifying just 0.766 seconds slower than Lance Stroll despite not having driven the car prior to qualifying. This was a fine effort given that he only had time for five flying laps in qualifying.

Finally, Fernando Alonso gave McLaren some cheer by recording the fastest lap of the race. This last happened more recently than you might imagine: Alonso did the fastest lap at Monza last year. This was the 23rd of his career, putting him level with Juan Manuel Fangio and Nelson Piquet.

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

2017 Hungarian Grand Prix

Browse all 2017 Hungarian Grand Prix articles

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...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

33 comments on “Still no back-to-back winners in 2017”

  1. Always look forward to the stats article – it never disappoints! I hope we carry on with no back-to-back winners for the rest of the year… keeps it spicy!

    Was Hamilton’s last lap act “charitable”? To paraphrase something I saw on Twitter; if I borrow £10 from you, then later give it back, is that “charitable” or simply doing the right thing? If Hamilton hadn’t been let through by Bottas he would have been fourth anyway. Granted, what he did was unexpected, given the pysche of a racing driver (and particularly Lewis Hamilton), but it was also simply staying true to his word and doing what he should.

    1. @ben-n great analogy there. ‘Wow, he didn’t steal the tenner – what a nice, charitable guy!’ Err, no not really… I’m glad Hammy did ‘return the tenner’ though as it (3rd place) was never his, it was on loan.

    2. I have to agree with that. There has been a lot made of this (particularly by SkySports F1), but the deal was made and he kept his side of the bargain, just like Bottas did.

      If you are going to say Hamilton was charitable, you have to say Bottas was as well by letting Hamilton through in the first place (and also doing so in a way that lost him no time whatsoever).

    3. Fukobayashi (@)
      31st July 2017, 14:19

      I think the fact that he gave the place back has gained more attention because his main title rival who would never do the same (Multi 21 anyone) – So despite Hamilton’s detractors, if he wins this championship and in light of the engineered result at Monaco and the Baku incident, he will be seen as the moral victor also.

      1. @offdutyrockstar
        Unlike yesterday, in “multi-21” there wasn’t an opportunity to pass a car that was ahead of the 2 Red Bulls. In fact their team orders threatened their 1-2 as Hamilton undercut the already held up Vettel at one of the stops. So Malaysia 2013 was a completely different situation to Hungary 2017.

        1. threatened their 1-2 as Hamilton undercut

          I guess Sepang isn’t the worst place for overtaking but surely like Hungary this year it’s best if the faster driver defends against HAM instead of the instead protected-but-otherwise-would’ve-been-a-sitting-duck slower driver at front?

    4. It is by no means charitable by our standards, but for racing drivers, it is. Very few racing drivers would actually keep their promises – they would just bargain with the team to get by into the lead, and then claim their teammate too far behind or too close to another rival (making the move risky). As another commenter on this site explained (sorry I forgot who you were), Hamilton could have used both of those excuses.

    5. @ben-n I would even go further and say that Hamilton doesn’t like the recent trend of negativity surrounding his person and knew he needed to gain some positive feedback. Just look at the booing at Silverstone and the London F1 Live event. Hamilton doesn’t return favours, Bottas isn’t his friend by far (Rosberg once was) and there wasn’t an option in which he didn’t give the place back. Even with Verstappen being this close to Bottas, it would only end in negative feedback since Bottas was already promised to be given the place back.

  2. at Monza last year

    The power of dreams works sometimes, it seems

    1. To be fair, Alonso only scored that fastest lap by pitting for fresh tyres with just a few laps to go and then banging out quali laps to the finish. He was way out of the points and just wanted to have some fun

      1. @celicadion23 True, Alonso knows PR. I think it’s very simple, when asked about the fastest lap during the Hungarian GP he reacted somewhat indifferent. To me this shows he couldn’t care less about the FL itself, but did it all for the (team) PR.

      2. Fukobayashi (@)
        1st August 2017, 9:51

        @celicadion23 did you watch the race? Because that’s a completely made up ‘fact’.

        Alonso’s tyres were comparably old to everybody else. Have a look;

        https://www.racefans.net/2017/07/30/2017-hungarian-grand-prix-interactive-lap-times-and-fastest-laps/

        1. Fukobayashi (@)
          1st August 2017, 9:52

          My bad. Just realised you were referring to Monza last year

  3. Thanks to their 6th and 10th places, McLaren have moved ahead of Sauber who are now last in the constructors championship with five points, which effectively guarantees that the team who finishes last in the constructors this season will have at least five points. Surely this will set the record for the most points scored by the team who finished last in the constructors?

    1. Not yet there, Toro Rosso had 8 in 2009 (and there were less points available)

      1. Ahhh forgot about 2009

        1. Good point @bleu
          @celicadion23 There was also that race which allowed Minardi to gain 7 points in 2005 (18 under the current system).

  4. Daniel Ricciardo retired on the first lap for the first time in his career. Before, he was leading the statistic with most races without ever retiring on the first lap, but now the top spot is transferred to Timo Glock who made 91 starts. The top spot may change again soon as Bottas is just three races behind.

    Current top 5:
    Glock 91
    Bottas 88
    Johansson 79
    Kubica 76
    Kvyat 68

    Four drivers have reached 100 GP plateau without retiring on the first lap, however each of these suffered the fate later in their careers. On the top spot it’s Thierry Boutsen, who went from 1983 to 1991 before first-lap retirement in his 135th race. Ricciardo is second. Emerson Fittipaldi managed to drive 104 and Martin Brundle 100 races without first-lap-retirement before suffering one.

    1. A really interesting stat and I’m sure that Vettel in particular would find it surprising that Kvyat is yet to retire on lap one!

    2. Great stat! And really surprised to see Kvyat’s name on the list. May be we should contrast this with the number of penalties a driver has got for 1st lap incidents :)
      Kvyat will come out on top for that also..

  5. @celicadion23 6th Fernando Alonso McLaren-Honda. Looks like points to me ;-)

  6. The #40 is also the 40th different number to be use in a GP race since 2014 when drivers could pick their own number.
    Of those 40, 34 were picked by the drivers, 5 were team reserve driver numbers, and 1 is the champions number.
    Only 37 drivers have actually raced in that time span. Sebastian Vettel (1, champion then 5, personal), Stoffel Vandoorne (47, team reserve then 2, personal), and Will Stevens (46 team reserve, then 28, personal) have used more then 2 numbers.
    A further 6 numbers (34, 37, 38, 41, 42 and 50) have only been used in free practice for reserve drivers.

    Upon looking some of this stuff up, I noticed that Williams used the number 40 in 2014. Felipe Nasr drove it during Free Practice 1 at the Bahrain Grand Prix

  7. -In 2014 Hamilton won the championship when Rosberg was on 202 points, same as Vettel now.
    -Alonso scored only his 23rd fastest lap this race.
    -The 2017 season has seen the most Finnish podium finishers since Kimi and Kovailainen back in 2008.
    -Vettel is the first Ferrari driver to secure 8 1st or 2nd places since Massa in 2008.
    -Kimi has the most podiums of any driver on the Hungaroring.
    -Vettel only becomes the second driver after Schumacher to win the Hungarion GP twice with Ferrari.
    -This is the first season since 2010 in which Ferrari had 2 one-two finishes.

    1. – This is the first season since 2010 where more than 1 team has scored a 1-2 finish! In 2010, three teams scored 1-2s and that too each of them scored at least 2 1-2s.

      1. Two teams did it last year. RB got a 1-2 in Malaysia.

  8. Michael Brown (@)
    31st July 2017, 13:49

    No back to back winners reminds me of 2012 season.

  9. Can’t find the source, but double checked and Daniil Kvyat has scored 10 penalty points in the last 12 months, but only 8 world championship points…

    1. @npf1 Great stat!

  10. mark jackson
    31st July 2017, 14:50

    Alonso: “I cannot challenge for titles, wins, or podiums yet so I will settle for fastest laps”

  11. I can’t take credit for this (saw it elsewhere on the internet), but only once before has Ferrari had a 1-2 finish, and also Alonso sets the fastest lap: Bahrain 2010,

  12. First time since 2010 that Ferrari scores more than 3 victories and 2 1-2s. First time since 2008 that they score more than 2 pole positions. Hungaroring also is the only track that a team other than Mercedes has the most victories since the introduction of the hybrid power units in 2014. Also McLaren has scored fifth places both in 2015 and 2016 so the sixth of Alonso the high point of the season for McLaren is even lower than the dreadful campaigns of the last 2 years.

  13. Raikkonen’s 8th podium at Hungaroring – equals the non-Schumacher record for most podiums at 1 circuit. He also has 8 at Sakhir, but only 1 victory combined at the 2 tracks.

    Only Giovinazzi, Button, and di Resta have not started a race ahead of their team-mate this year.

    Despite both being regular low points-scorers this year, this is the first time this year that Perez has finished 8th and the first time Ocon has finished 9th.

    Vettel is the third driver, after Schumacher and Hamilton, to have led 15000km.

    First non-mechanical DNF for Ricciardo since Singapore 2013.

    Hamilton has won exactly half of the races in the hybrid era (35 out of 70).

    Ferrari have already managed more podiums in 2017 than in the whole of 2016.

    6th time that less than 1 second has separated 1st and 2nd in Hungary.

    Thanks to statsf1.com and magnetimarelli.com for some of these.

Comments are closed.