Stat Attack: Monaco (post-race)

The table above shows that Vettel has enjoyed one of the best starts to a season in Formula 1 World Championship history, with only four drivers having had a bigger proportional points advantage at this stage of the season than the German.

Qualifying notes

• Vettel scored his 20th career pole, moving him into equal 10th spot in the all-time list alongside Damon Hill and Fernando Alonso. Ayrton Senna, acknowledged as the best qualifier of all time, took just one race less than Vettel to rack up his 20th pole. Senna took 67 grands prix to do it while Vettel did it in 68. Both are some way behind Juan Manuel Fangio, however. The Argentinian great managed 20 poles in just 40 races.

• Red Bull equalled its best run of consecutive pole positions. Vettel's Monaco pole was its seventh in a row. The team did likewise between the Bahrain and Turkish Grands Prix last year.

Button was on the front row © LAT

• Jenson Button's second place on the grid was only his third front row start since joining McLaren. It also repeated the Vettel-Button front row seen in China three races ago.

• Michael Schumacher's fifth place on the grid equalled his best starting spot since coming out of retirement at the start of 2010. It was also the first time this year that he outqualified his Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg.

• Felipe Massa's Monaco grid spot was his worst in the Principality since he qualified 11th for Sauber in 2005 (not including '06, when an engine change put him to the back of the grid).

• Rosberg has never qualified higher than fifth, or lower than eighth at Monaco. He was eighth on the grid both on his debut in 2006 and last weekend.

• Seventh spot (which became ninth after his Q3 times were deleted) marked Lewis Hamilton's worst grid spot since last year's Japanese Grand Prix. On that occasion, a gearbox change demoted him from third to eighth. The last time he qualified lower was in Malaysia last year when McLaren messed up its strategy after a sudden storm hit the Sepang circuit.

• Just a week after securing the best grid spot for a Venezuelan driver in F1 - ninth in Spain - Pastor Maldonado repeated the effort at Monaco (before being promoted to eighth by Hamilton's penalty).

• Sergio Perez secured the best grid spot of his career at Monaco with 10th for Sauber, but the Mexican was unable to start the race after hurting himself in his heavy Q3 crash.

• Monaco represented the first event all year at which Vitaly Petrov failed to make it into Q3. The Renault driver did start 10th, however, following Perez's withdrawal.

• Jaime Alguersuari was eliminated in Q1 at Monaco - the first time this has happened since last year's British Grand Prix. His 20th place on the grid was also the Spaniard's worst qualifying result since the 2009 Italian Grand Prix.

• For the first time since the 2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, neither Renault made it into Q3.

Race notes

• Vettel's numbers just keep on improving. Monaco gave him his 15th F1 win - putting him neck-and-neck with Hamilton at 15th place in the all-time wins list. It was also his 25th career podium (and an eighth in a row) as well as the 10th consecutive race he has led. Significantly, only six times in F1 history has a driver led more than 10 races in a row. The record holder is surprisingly not Michael Schumacher, but Jackie Stewart, who led 17 consecutive races from the 1968 US Grand Prix to the 1970 Belgian race. He won eight of those races.

• Red Bull has now won 20 times in grand prix racing, putting it ninth in the all-time wins list among constructors.

• Alonso took his best result of the year at Monaco with second place.

• Monaco represented another missed opportunity for Button. He has failed to win any of the last eight races that he has led, but has been on the podium eight times since his last win, in China in 2010.

• Mark Webber became the 30th man in F1 World Championship history to record 10 fastest laps, equalling the achievements of Graham Hill, John Surtees and Mario Andretti. Webber has racked up four FLs in the last five races. His team-mate Vettel has scored four wins in that time.

A career-best finish for Kobayashi © LAT

• Kamui Kobayashi scored the best result of his Formula 1 career with fifth place at Monaco. Only six times in World Championship history has a Japanese driver finished higher. Aguri Suzuki recorded the first podium finish for his country at Suzuka in 1990 for Lola, and Takuma Sato equalled his achievement in the 2004 US Grand Prix for BAR.

• Adrian Sutil's seventh spot at Monaco was his best result since finishing fifth in Belgium last year.

• Rubens Barrichello's ninth place gave him his first points since last year's Korean Grand Prix and Williams its first score since Nico Hulkenberg's points in Brazil one race later.

• Jarno Trulli's 13th place equalled his best race finish since moving to Lotus. It is the third time he has finished there since the start of 2010.

• Alguersuari's late retirement was the first time he had failed to finish a race due to an accident since the 2009 Japanese Grand Prix.

• Massa has now endured back-to-back retirements for the first time since Australia and Malaysia in 2008.