Stats: how has Vettel matched Ascari and Clark?

VETTEL'S GRAND SLAMS MOUNT UP

The Korean Grand Prix marked the 34th career victory for Sebastian Vettel and was his fourth straight win, matching his sequence last year from Singapore to India and in 2010-11 from Brazil to Malaysia. But he's never nailed a string of five...

With pole, fastest lap and a full race in the lead, it was the fourth 'grand slam' of his Formula 1 career. That's the same number recorded by Jackie Stewart, Nigel Mansell and Ayrton Senna.

More significantly, Vettel is only the third driver in history to nail two back-to-back pole/win/all-laps-led/fastest lap combinations.

The other two occurrences belong to the early days of F1: Alberto Ascari in the 1952 German and Dutch Grands Prix, and Jim Clark in the Dutch and French races in 1963.

Vettel's chances of making history with a third straight grand slam are pretty good, as he scored one in Japan last season.

Clark's run of consecutive clean sweeps started at Zandvoort in 1963 © LAT

In AUTOSPORT's Korea stats preview, we highlighted Vettel's amazing laps-led record at Yeongam. That's now even more imposing: he has led 208 of F1's 220 racing laps at Yeongam (94 per cent) and 208 of the 210 he's completed (99 per cent), as he retired from the lead with 10 laps to go in 2010.

Vettel has now led every F1 lap since lap 28 of the Italian GP which, combined with his lights-to-flag domination of Singapore and Korea, means he has now amassed 142 consecutive laps in the lead (768km). Last year he was able to lead from the 23rd lap in Singapore until the chequered flag in India, for a total of 205 laps (1111km).

This is the 40th time that Vettel has left a race at the head of the world championship standings. He should soon surpass Niki Lauda's tally - the three-time champion topped the table on 42 occasions in his career.

THE POLE NEMESIS

For the 16th time in his career, Lewis Hamilton was second to a Red Bull car on the grid. Vettel has claimed pole 13 times with Hamilton second, while on the other three occasions it was Mark Webber ahead.

That's a high value, but not close to the 23 times Michael Schumacher was pipped for pole by a Williams car. That's the record in F1 for a driver coming second in qualifying to a rival team.

Hamilton has now had 26 second places on the grid. On 16 of those occasions, pole was 'stolen' by a Red Bull. Six were by a Ferrari, always Felipe Massa, during 2007-8. He was pipped by team-mates on the other four occasions: Fernando Alonso at McLaren in Monaco and Italy in 2007, and Nico Rosberg at Mercedes in Spain and Monaco this year.

F1's record number of second places in qualifying belongs to Alain Prost, who started from the humble side of the front row 53 times.

Senna beat Prost to pole on 26 different occasions © LAT

He was beaten for pole by a team-mate 28 times and 26 times by his arch-rival Ayrton Senna (19 when they were team-mates at McLaren, six times when Prost was at Ferrari and once when Prost was at Williams).

Hamilton is only one second place shy of compatriot Damon Hill, who was second on the grid 27 times.

Hill's main nemesis was Prost, who beat him to pole 10 times, all in 1993, when they were team-mates at Williams. Hill was also beaten for pole nine times by his mid-'90s rival Schumacher.

Schumacher is second in the rankings for second places on the grid with 48 such results. Only six times was he beaten by a team-mate for first place, but he has no particular qualifying nemesis - he was second on the grid to no fewer than 17 different drivers in his career. Hill comes out on top, having scored pole in front of Schumacher seven times.

David Coulthard counts 26 second places on the grid, like Hamilton. His nemesis was his McLaren team-mate Mika Hakkinen, who was on pole 15 times with Coulthard second during the 1998-2000 campaigns.

Vettel and Hamilton shared the front row for the 20th time in Korea. That's the same number as Vettel and his team-mate Webber.

ALONSO ISN'T HITTING THE NUMBERS

Alonso's struggle in qualifying continues. He's now on 10 straight races without starting on the first two rows of the grid. This year he has never been on the front row at all.

That's a worrying aspect for his slim championship hopes, as the only world champion who was able to take the title without starting from the front row was Lauda in 1984.

Lauda 1984: the only time a champion never started on the front row © LAT

That year the Austrian didn't get into the top four in qualifying in the first nine races, before scoring a third spot at the British Grand Prix.

Vettel, on the other hand, has always qualified in the first three spots this year, except for the Chinese Grand Prix, when he reached Q3 and decided not to run (to save tyres) ending up ninth on the grid without a lap time.

His qualifying score against Alonso this year is 13-1, with China being the only time Fernando started ahead.

KOREA STAT ROUND-UP

• Kimi Raikkonen was second for the sixth time this year, closing in on the season record of seven, recorded six times in F1 history, once by Raikkonen himself in 2003. The others are: Nelson Piquet 1987, Prost 1988, Hakkinen 2000, Rubens Barrichello 2004 and Alonso 2006.

This was Raikkonen's first Yeongam podium, which means the only remaining current F1 tracks where he has yet to take a top-three finish are the upcoming Buddh and Austin circuits.

• Romain Grosjean's third podium of the season mirrored his previous two: just as in Bahrain and Germany, he was third behind Vettel and Lotus team-mate Raikkonen. In five of his six career podiums he has finished behind his team-mate, adding Bahrain and Hungary last year to the 2013 trio.

• Renault had its third podium sweep of the year and its 160th F1 win. In 1996, Renault engines filled the podium five times.

• Nico Hulkenberg matched his best career result of fourth, achieved in Belgium last year. His Sauber team-mate Esteban Gutierrez did the same in 11th (scored previously in Spain).

• As he avoided his spinning Ferrari team-mate Massa, Alonso lost a place on the opening lap for the first time since the 2011 Indian Grand Prix, breaking a string of 35 races in which he either gained places or maintained his grid position (his accidents at the start at Spa and Suzuka last year are excluded as he didn't complete the first lap). Sixth place at the flag was the worst result for Alonso at this track.

• Pastor Maldonado, on the other hand, recorded the best start of the season, gaining nine places on the opening lap.

Webber's win drought matches his worst since his breakthrough © XPB

• Webber's win drought reached 25 races after Korea, the same as he endured from the 2010 Belgian GP to the 2011 Abu Dhabi GP, and the longest since he started winning, back in Germany 2009.

• Force India recorded another double retirement, the fourth this year after Malaysia, Hungary and Italy. In its last 10 starts, the team saw the chequered flag only twice, with Sutil in Belgium and Singapore.

It is dead last in the teams' ranking of kilometres run this year on 6958. Toro Rosso is second to last at 7269. The team that's run most kilometres this year is McLaren (8431), as a result of recording only three retirements - in the closing stages in Malaysia, Monaco and Great Britain. Its drivers have both been officially classified in every race so far.

• This was Vettel's 42nd pole and the 208th for a Renault engine, as the French firm equalled Ferrari at the top of the all-time standings. It was also the 125th pole for a German driver; Germany now shares second on the all-time list with Brazil, while Great Britain leads on 217.

• After Jules Bianchi's penalty for impeding Paul di Resta, Vettel became the only driver who has started in front of his team-mate in all 14 races so far this year.

• In his four Korean Grands Prix, Alonso has now occupied all the grid slots from third to sixth: third in 2010, fourth in '12, fifth this year and sixth in 2011. This was his 28th fifth place on an F1 grid, matching the all-time record set by Rubens Barrichello.

All stats courtesy of FORIX - the most comprehensive motorsport statistics database on the internet