Stats: Hamilton and Vettel trade blows

Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton are racking up the statistics together.

For the third time in a row, these two drivers started in front of everyone else and in the same grid positions. Curiously, the last string of three identical front rows, in 2011, also featured these two drivers, but with their positions inverted, at the Hungarian, Belgian and Italian Grands Prix.

It's the 19th time that Hamilton and Vettel have shared the front row, with only Vettel and team-mate Mark Webber achieving the same number of front rows together among the current drivers.

The all-time record for shared front rows belongs to Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, who started first and second 34 times.

Hamilton and Vettel were both making their 56th front-row starts as well, equalling Nigel Mansell, who is fourth overall (Michael Schumacher is top with 116).

Senna and Prost shared a grand prix front row 34 times © LAT

Come the race, Vettel and Hamilton both scored their 54th podiums, equalling Niki Lauda, who is 10th in the list of top-three finishes (Michael Schumacher again leads with 155).

This is also the 18th time that Vettel and Hamilton have shared the podium.

THE DAY KIMI STOPPED

Kimi Raikkonen's Belgian Grand Prix form follows a very specific pattern. He is either on the podium (he was a winner in 2004, '05, '07 and '09, and third last year) or retires ('01, '02, '08 and this year).

It was just a brake failure, but Raikkonen's 2013 retirement nevertheless goes into the record books, putting an end to his unequalled run of points-finishing races (27) begun in Bahrain last year.

Raikkonen had also been a classified finisher in his past 38 races (eight from 2009 and 30 from 2012 onwards), which is also an all-time record. His last retirement in F1 previous to Spa was in the 2009 German Grand Prix (with a radiator failure).

The Finn's failure means that there are now only three drivers yet to retire with mechanical failure this year: Fernando Alonso (his last one was in Malaysia 2010, which is 66 consecutive races - an all-time record), Lewis Hamilton (his last was in Abu Dhabi 2012) and Max Chilton (who has never retired from any of his F1 races).

RACE

Mansell scored his 31st and final win in the 1994 Australian GP © LAT

• Sebastian Vettel scored his 31st win at Spa, the same number as British world champion Nigel Mansell, which puts them equal fifth overall among drivers with most wins. Vettel led all the way, the eighth time in his career he has done so, becoming the fifth driver in history to have recorded at least 2000 laps in the lead (he now stands at 2037).

Michael Schumacher leads this chart with 5111 laps led, while Seb is closing on Nigel Mansell (who led 2089 laps).

• This was Vettel's 30th win for Red Bull, the number won by Alain Prost for McLaren. Thirty wins for one team is the third highest total ever, behind only the 72 wins of Schumacher for Ferrari and the 35 of Senna for McLaren.

• A quick glance at this year's world championship shows that Vettel has won three of the past five races. He has also had one retirement when leading and a third place. Fernando Alonso, meanwhile, was back on the podium after a two-race absence, but hasn't led a single lap since his win in Spain, back in May. In this same period Vettel, despite his retirement, has collected 90 points to Alonso's 73.

• Fernando Alonso achieved his first Spa podium finish for Ferrari, but had to fight hard for it, once again starting from a poor grid position.

It's the 61st time he's finished on the podium despite not starting from the front row. Alonso now has 92 podiums in total, a success rate of 66 per cent. The top driver in similar circumstances is another former Ferrari driver. Michael Schumacher took 66 podiums without starting from the front. In comparison, Vettel has only been on the podium 11 times (a 20 per cent success rate) after starting from third or lower. The rest of Vettel's podiums (43) have come from front-row starts.

• This was Mercedes' 30th podium in its history, and the first at Spa since 1955. In its previous incarnations as Brawn and Honda, the team never got on the podium here.

• McLaren's podium drought continues: this is its 11th race this year without one, and the team is now facing its worst start to a season since 1995, when Mika Hakkinen achieved his first podium of the year at the 12th race (Monza).

• Red Bull (through Vettel) has now equalled Benetton in the list of fastest race laps (36) for sixth place overall. This was Vettel's 19th fastest lap, and now he shares 12th spot overall with Stirling Moss, Ayrton Senna and Damon Hill.

Hakkinen's first of 131 races for McLaren came in Portugal in 1993 © LAT

• This was Felipe Massa's 131st race for Ferrari, equalling the number recorded by Mika Hakkinen for McLaren. It puts them third in the list of drivers racing for a single team, behind the 179 races of Schumacher (Ferrari) and the 150 of David Coulthard (McLaren).

Massa now has more than 50 per cent of his Ferrari races without a pole position or a win. His last of either was in the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix, 80 races ago.

QUALIFYING

• Lewis Hamilton extended his personal best qualifying run to four consecutive poles and seven front rows. The last time there was a string of four poles in F1 was back in 2011, from Hungary to Japan, when Vettel nailed five. Hamilton is the first British driver to record four straight poles since Damon Hill, back in 1995 (from France to Hungary).

• Paul di Resta equalled his best qualifying result of fifth, which he scored in Bahrain this year, taking a Force India back into the top 10 on the grid for the first time since Silverstone.

• Jenson Button recorded his best qualifying result of the season in sixth, but has now completed a full year without a pole position. The 2012 and 2013 Belgian Grands Prix are the only races in which Button has been able to start from the top 10 in two consecutive years (his 11th and 12th races here).

• Eighth spot was Kimi Raikkonen's worst qualifying showing in Belgium since 2004, when he started 10th, but eventually won the race.

2009, the last time Alonso missed the qualifying top-four for seven straight races © LAT

• Fernando Alonso extended his front-row drought to 21 races, but the second row is also eluding him at the moment. This was his seventh race without qualifying among the top four. This is his worst form since joining Ferrari in 2010.

The last time he went seven races without a top-four grid spot was in his last seven races for Renault in 2009.

• Felipe Massa completed a bad day for Ferrari (it has never started from the front row with either of its current drivers here) in 10th. Two of Massa's three worst qualifying results at Spa have come in the past two years. He was 10th this year and 14th last year. In his first Belgian Grand Prix, in 2002, he was 17th on the grid.

• Nico Hulkenberg and Adrian Sutil were the first two drivers to go out in the second qualifying stint both here and in Hungary. Hulkenberg lost out by only 0.021 seconds, the smallest margin of the year in Q2.

• Curiously, at Spa a McLaren qualified in 13th place for the fourth consecutive occasion this year (three for Perez and one for Button).

• Giedo Van der Garde (14th), Jules Bianchi (15th) and Max Chilton (16th) recorded their best career qualifying results at Spa, taking three of the four cars of the 'new teams' into Q2.

• For Caterham (and formerly Lotus) this was the ninth time in its history that it has got into Q2, while for Marussia (formerly Virgin) it was its third and fourth times. Bianchi's 15th grid slot was its best qualifying performance. Its next best was the 16th place of Timo Glock in Malaysia, 2010. Marussia hadn't had a single Q2 appearance since the start of the 2011 season. Charles Pic, meanwhile, is now the only 2013 driver never to make it to Q2.

• Toro Rosso hadn't had both its cars in the drop zone in Q1 since the 2011 British Grand Prix. Jean-Eric Vergne hasn't qualified so low since the 2012 Indian Grand Prix. Daniel Ricciardo, meanwhile, just failed to equal a team record. He had started in the top 10 in each of the past four races, but the team's record is five races, achieved by Vettel over the last five races of the 2008 season (pictured below). Ricciardo hasn't qualified so low since he started in F1 with HRT, back in 2011 (his best result then was 20th in Abu Dhabi).