Stats: flying Vettel matches Alonso

Sebastian Vettel's Italian Grand Prix win was his 32nd career Formula 1 victory, which puts him level with Fernando Alonso in the fourth all-time spot. Only Michael Schumacher (91), Alain Prost (51) and Ayrton Senna (41) have more.

This was Vettel's third win at Monza, all three obtained in the same way - from pole and leading exactly 49 laps each time. The German can now count the same number of Italian GP wins as Juan Manuel Fangio, Stirling Moss, Ronnie Peterson, Alain Prost, Rubens Barrichello and Nelson Piquet (who also won the only Italian GP held at Imola, in 1980). Michael Schumacher holds the record with five wins at Monza.

Red Bull's Monza success was its 40th in F1. Its first came in China in 2009, 85 races ago, thus meaning that the British squad has won almost every other race.

Vettel posted only the 12th fastest race lap - equal-second lowest for an F1 winner behind his own (14th) for Toro Rosso at Monza in 2008. Michael Schumacher (1997 Belgian GP) and Lewis Hamilton (2010 Turkish GP) also won with only the 12th fastest lap.

Vettel scored the 300th podium finish for a German driver (Great Britain leads at 584).

Schumacher is still the master of Monza © LAT

Fernando Alonso has finished second to Vettel in the past two races; this time he scored his 40th podium finish for Ferrari in 70 races and was able to lead for the first time since winning in Spain, albeit only during the pitstop sequence when he stayed out later than Vettel.

However, the Spaniard's championship chase has suffered in the past four races. Vettel has won three times and finished third once in that time, scoring 90 points to Alonso's 58.

After 12 races, compared with this time last year, Vettel has 82 points more, so, for points gained in that time, he is closer to his dominant year of 2011, having only 37 points fewer than two years ago at the same point in the season. Fernando, on the other hand, has only five points more than at this time last year.

RACE

• Mark Webber was able to finish on the podium (and start from the front row) for the first time at Monza, at his 12th attempt.

• It was the 60th straight points finish for Ferrari, the Scuderia closing on the all-time record of 64 held by McLaren (a sequence that ended in Monaco this year).

• Fifth place was the best result so far this year for Nico Hulkenberg (and for Sauber). It's one of the three fifths the German has scored in his career, along with last year's European and Brazilian GPs. He fared better only once, in Belgium last year, when he was fourth.

• Daniel Ricciardo equalled his best career result, a seventh obtained in China this year.

• Lewis Hamilton recorded his 13th career fastest lap, his first this season. It was also the 13th in Mercedes history, the most recent coming exactly year ago at Monza.

• Nico Rosberg recorded the second fastest race lap - the first time in modern history that Mercedes has recorded a fastest lap one-two. In 1954 and '55, when Mercedes had a dominant car, the fastest laps were not recorded for every car and only the fastest overall was kept in the history books.

Raikkonen failed to score again © LAT

• After ending his record run of 27 races in the points in Belgium, Kimi Raikkonen also failed to score at Monza. It's the first time for him without points in back-to-back races since the string of three he recorded back in 2009 between Australia and China. His 11th place is his worst finish at Monza in 11 races (he retired in 2002 and 2004).

• Jean-Eric Vergne took his fifth retirement of the year. He's completed the smallest racing mileage of any driver this season so far, with only 1754 miles. Hamilton is next on 2259.

• Paul di Resta only retired four times in his first two seasons in F1. This year, however, he's racked up four DNFs already, three of them in the past three races. Force India's recent form is also cause for concern - it scored only two points (with Adrian Sutil in Belgium) in the past four races, retiring five times out of eight starts in this time span.

• For the first time since 2001, neither McLaren was able to finish in the top seven at Monza. In 2001, David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen both retired with mechanical failures. This year, neither McLaren driver has finished on the podium - the team's worst tally since 1980, when it didn't take a top-three finish all year.

QUALIFYING

• Sebastian Vettel became the third driver in F1 history with at least 40 career poles. Only Senna (65) and Michael Schumacher (68) took more. Vettel also recorded the 50th pole for Red Bull, which stands only one shy of Renault for fifth on the all-time list.

Since the 2009 Chinese GP, its first pole, it has recorded 50 out of 85 (58 per cent) - nearly two out of three. Vettel has completed a full calendar year of reaching Q3, his last Q2 elimination coming in Belgium last year.

• Mark Webber was back on the front row after a 10-race drought that started in Malaysia - his longest since the 17 races that separated the 2008 and 2009 British GPs. This was his 34th front-row start, the same as Barrichello and Rene Arnoux.

It was also the 20th time that Vettel and Webber shared the front row, the same number as 1950s greats Giuseppe Farina and Fangio. This was the first front-row lockout at Monza for Red Bull.

• Nico Hulkenberg recorded his second-best career starting position after his pole in the wet in Brazil in 2010. It's the seventh time in history that a Sauber car (not a BMW Sauber) has started in the first three positions.

The Swiss team has never been on pole, its best results being three seconds and four thirds. Monza marked its first third-place qualifying result since last year's Japanese GP with Kamui Kobayashi.

Hamilton had not failed to reach Q3 since Malaysia 2010 © LAT

• One of the victims of qualifying was Lewis Hamilton, who was dropped for the third qualifying session for the first time in 66 straight races, a record sequence of this qualifying format. It was obviously his worst grid spot of the season and the worst since last year's Spanish GP, when he started last (24th) after being disqualified from pole with insufficient fuel onboard.

It also brought an end to Lewis's string of seven front-row starts this year, while Mercedes, with Nico Rosberg only sixth on grid, ended a string of four poles and nine front-row starts. It was also the first time this year in which Mercedes wasn't able to qualify among the first four.

• Felipe Massa scored his best qualifying result since Bahrain, with fourth. It was the fourth time this year that he has outqualified Alonso, already equalling his best record against the Spaniard (scored in 2010 and '11). Felipe has never outqualified Alonso five times in a season since they became team-mates in 2010.

• McLaren failed to get a car in the top seven at Monza for the first time since 1983 when Niki Lauda qualified 13th and John Watson 15th.

• Toro Rosso got both cars in the top 10 for the first time since the 2011 Indian GP. This year the team also succeeded in getting both cars into Q3 in Canada, but Daniel Ricciardo was later penalised.

• Another victim of Monza's Q2 session was Kimi Raikkonen, who was only 11th, thus putting an end to his career-best string of 17 top-10 starts, which started in Japan last year. Lotus had both its cars outside the top 10 on the grid for the first time since the 2011 Indian GP.