Stat attack: Malaysia (post-race)

Qualifying notes

• Sebastian Vettel took his third consecutive pole and his seventh straight front row start (25th in his career) in Malaysia. The last one to record a similar streak was Michael Schumacher -from the 2002 French Grand Prix to the 2003 Australian Grand Prix (eight races). Vettel claimed his 17th career pole, equalling Jackie Stewart at 15th in the all-time list

• Vettel may have managed seven front row starts in the last seven races, but his team-mate Mark Webber has managed only two, the last one in Korea last year. In each of the last seven races the Australian has been beaten by Vettel in qualifying;

• The first five and the last six positions of the grid were exactly the same as the Australian Grand Prix. More than half of the field (13 drivers) qualified in exactly the same position

• Nick Heidfeld obtained his best grid spot since the 2009 Japanese Grand Prix (fourth). And he hadn't made the top-10 since Abu Dhabi the same year

• Kamui Kobayashi qualified in the top-10 in back-to-back races for the first time

• Rubens Barrichello on the other hand hadn't missed the top-10 in consecutive races since Turkey and Canada last year, until last weekend

• A Williams hasn't qualified as low down the grid as Pastor Maldonado's 18th position since the 2009 Italian Grand Prix

Race notes

• Sebastian Vettel scored his twelfth win, joining Mario Andretti, Carlos Reutemann and Alan Jones at 21st on the all-time winners list. The world champion is now on a run of four straight wins. Jenson Button produced a similar streak in 2009, from Bahrain to Turkey. If he makes it to five, it will be the first time since Michael Schumacher managed a sequence of seven in 2004 - from the European to the Hungarian Grands Prix;

• Red Bull equalled BRM's position of ninth in the all-time team's race win list (17)

• While Vettel scored his fourth straight win, Mark Webber posted his third consecutive race out of the podium positions. Throughout 2010, the Australian was never off the podium for more than two consecutive races. It could be even more frustrating for him to think that in the last two Malaysian Grands Prix, he has now set the fastest lap while his team-mate has gone on to win the race

• Jenson Button reached 24th in the all-time podium list. His 32nd podium puts him on a par with Jim Clark, Jacques Laffite and Jean Alesi. This was also the 550th podium for a British driver: Great Britain leads this particular table by a huge margin with 293 more podium appearances than France. Indeed the last time a French driver stood on the podium was the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix (Jean Alesi)

• Nick Heidfeld stepped on to the podium after a wait of two years - his last appearance in the champagne box was at Malaysia in 2009. The German is now the undisputed all-time leader of podiums without wins: 13 to Stefan Johansson's 12

• This was the 100th podium finish for the Renault team. That's only two shy of its former incarnation, Benetton, which occupies place in the all-time list

Rubens Barrichello notched up his first back-to-back retirements since 2006 © LAT

• Fernando Alonso has now missed the podium for the last three races. The last time this happened was at the beginning of last season, when the double world champion failed to make the podium in Australia, Malaysia and China after winning the opening round in Bahrain

• Until last weekend, Rubens Barrichello hadn't retired from back-to-back races since the French and German Grand Prix back in 2006. At the time the cause was two engine failures. This time it was transmission and hydraulic problems respectively. With his team-mate Pastor Maldonado, Williams recorded its first back-to-back double retirement since the 2006 German and Hungarian Grands Prix

• This year's Malaysian Grand Prix marked the fifth anniversary of the last win from an Italian driver in Formula 1, that of Giancarlo Fisichella in the 2006 event

Pit stop proliferation

There were 63 pit stops in the Malaysian Grand Prix. It's the fourth highest since data became available back in 1993. The highest value was recorded in the 2007 European Grand Prix, run in mixed conditions, with 75, next comes last year's Chinese GP (wet) at 67, then the very wet 1993 Donington Grand Prix (64).

Therefore the Malaysian Grand Prix was the dry race with the highest pit stop count in nearly twenty years, just ahead of last year's Canadian race, with 61.