2008 Chinese GP stats and facts

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Lewis Hamilton scored his second win/pole/fastest lap hat-trick

Strange coincidences between Lewis Hamilton and Rubens Barrichello, rotten luck for Adrian Sutil, and a championship hanging in the balance.

Here are the stats and facts from the Chinese Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton scored the ninth win of his F1 career and the first since he was stripped of victory in the Belgian Grand Prix. It was his fifth win this year, giving him one more than last year.

That gives him as many victories as Rubens Barrichello and Hamilton’s 13th pole position also matches Barrichello’s tally, along with Graham Hill, Jack Brabham, Jacky Ickx, Jacques Villeneuve and Juan Pablo Montoya.

It was his second ‘hat trick’ of win from pole position with fastest lap, the first coming at Fuji last year. That gives him as many as – you guessed it – Rubens Barrichello, plus eight other drivers.

Hamilton and Nick Heidfeld both passed the 200 points mark – Hamilton doing so after 34 starts, Heidfeld after 149. Ferrari, meanwhile, scored their 4,000th point, hitting 4007.5. McLaren are second on the all-time points tally with 3304.5.

One final Lewis Hamilton stat: he goes into the final round with a seven-point lead over Felipe Massa, the same lead he had over Kimi Raikkonen last year. However they do not have the added complication of a third driver in the title battle, Robert Kubica having dropped out of the running.

The current points system was introduced in 2003 with the intention of making championship battles closer. But were the previous points system being used, Hamilton’s advantage over Massa would be five points instead of seven.

McLaren scored their first Chinese Grand Prix victory.

Sebastian Vettel’s best-ever points-scoring streak came to an end after five consecutive races in the top eight.

Adrian Sutil suffered his 11th retirement of the season, three more than any other driver (second is Nelson Piquet Jnr with eight). It was his sixth mechanically-induced retirement, also three more than any other driver (Jarno Trulli, Heikki Kovalainen and Rubens Barrichello each have three).

The world championship will be decided at the final round for the third year in a row, and for the 25th time in F1’s 59-year history.

Spotted any other interesting stats and facts in the Chinese Grand Prix? Post them below…

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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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25 comments on “2008 Chinese GP stats and facts”

  1. Nick Heidfield completed another race…

  2. Impressive stats by Hamilton!

  3. Hamilton now has a trophy from every grand prix country he’s visited with the exception of Brazil.

  4. I wonder if this was the most boring race of the season as voted by F1fanatics? (e.g. more scores of 5/10 or less as a percentage of voters)

  5. Matt – Well spotted!

    Loki – Last time I did a round-up Spain was bottom. I’ll do another round-up at the end of the year.

    You can view all poll results here: F1 Fanatic polls archive

  6. schumi the greatest
    20th October 2008, 12:16

    this means that at the same point in their careers (2 full seasons) jacques villeneuve will have more race wins than hamilton, he had 11 after his 2nd season, and never won again or took another pole position again.

  7. Correct me if i’m wrong, but I think it’s the second Renault engine failure this year (Barcelona, Alonso & Shanghai, Webber), and the first for Red Bull.

  8. More Lewis stats which are a bit baffling:
    He has now won 9(10) races, all on different racetracks. He held pole position this year for all his previously victorious tracks (Canada, Hungary, Fuji) but failed to get reasonable results on any of them. What does this mean? I have no idea, probably nothing but a nice coincidence.

  9. @Schumi
    I agree, Hamiltons F1 campaign closely mimics that of Villeneuve, but you have to admit, the strength of the opposition back then was somewhat diluted by the wide spread in car performance. Villeneuve clearly had the best car on the grid and only his team mate as his main rival.
    Hamilton however, finds himself in a situation where the relative performance differences of all the cars on the grid are much smaller, at the same time, the competitive cars are more plentiful, and then we have outside events, like safety cars and race stewards that add some distortion to the outcome of races.

  10. I calculate the average mark left for the 2008 Chinese GP by F1fanatics to be 4.464 (so far, with 1,062 total votes) – which is lower than the 5.085 average left for Spain.

    However, looking at the Poll archives, the European GP average was only 3.575 with only 518 votes.

    Seems like when races are bad, they’re deemed really bad!

  11. Jian, I was just thinking the same too, If you notice, he has done very well so far in previous races where he had underperformed. Don’t forget, Silverstone was the first race he showed signs of cracking last season, German GP, was where he was first out of the podium and points. Then China :-)

  12. Matt,

    He never won the Europe GP but, you’re wright from the moment Europe is not a country (And never will, I’m afraid)

  13. Lewis is no Villeneauve , he is the real deal….. which will make it all the sweeter when KR , Alonso , Massa , Kubica or Vettell beat him in years to come

  14. If there had been less erm.. ‘debatable’ steward calls recently then Lewis would already be WDC.

  15. schumi the greatest
    20th October 2008, 16:27

    lol i should have explained a bit more, im not saying hamilton will end up like villeneuve, far from it!!

    hamilton has been in contention for the tittle at the last round of the last 2 seasons, as did villeneuve, but at no point has hamilton had a far superior car to the opposition as villeneuve did in 96, 97. at the 1st round of the 97 championship villeneueve was 2 seconds faster than the next non-williams. just shows how good hamilton has been doinf when you consider he has to battle with 2 ferrari’s who probably have a slightly better car the majority of the time

  16. Hamilton now has a trophy from every grand prix country he’s visited with the exception of Brazil.

    Oh, yeah, well spotted… Anyway, the GP bankers are doing rubbish trophies all season:

    Take a look at this picture HERE

  17. michael counsell
    20th October 2008, 18:05

    Hamilton ended his longest win drought in F1 (six races). It was also his first fastest lap of the season (Raikkonen has 11, with Massa, Heidfeld and Kovalainen all on 2)

    Fernando Alonso has scored the most points (40) in the last 7 races (2 wins, 4 fourths and a DNF). It was also his 5th 4th place of the season.

    Along with Massa and Hamiltons 5 wins, no one else has finished in the same position more often.

    If Massa had been the clear no.1 Ferrari driver from the start of the season Raikkonen could have handed him an extra two points at the Spanish GP. Kovalainen has never finished one place in front of Hamilton, either finishing at least two positions ahead or behind.

    The current top six in the championship (Ham, Mas, Kub, Rai, Hei, Alo) all finished in the top six which they previously did the Turkish GP weren’t the top 6.

    Webber and Rosberg recorded their worst finishing positions of the season in 14th and 15th.

  18. Michael Counsell,

    Raikkonen has made just 10 FLAPS not 11. He would like to take one more and beat his own record (with M Schumacher) of fastest laps in one season.

  19. Terry Fabulous
    20th October 2008, 22:06

    @ Becken

    Outstanding Spot!

  20. Heikki leads a GP for 10th , 7th time during this GP.
    Trulli drove his 198 GP here , and he’s still waiting for the fastest Lap .
    Mclaren started for the 141th time from the pole position.
    the 547th GP for ferrari where they scored points , 485th for Mclaren scored points , and 151 for Renault where they scored Points

  21. LOL!…Thanks for that picture link Becken,that’s just too funny.I love the look on Lewis and Kimi’s faces.

  22. I wonder if Lewis’ trophy was Made In China….. :D

  23. Anyone know why Massa had the ‘anvil wing’ and Kimi didn’t?

  24. They should revert back to the old points system, the current system rewards the best looser and doesnt encourage cut throat racing…

  25. Rregardless of the championship’s outcome, next year there will be three world champions on the grid.

    More or less the average value when in the middle of a new generation of drivers.

    At the beginning of 2007 there was only one (Alonso) given the retirement of Schumacher and Villeneuve.

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