Post-GP Statistical Analysis: Malaysia

A milestone for BMW Sauber

After 37 races, the German team were able to claim their first fastest lap by Nick Heidfeld, who in turn also recorded his first fastest lap, on his 134th race start.

This is the first non-McLaren/Ferrari fastest lap in 19 races. The two teams dominated the time sheets since Michael Schumacher set the fastest lap in his last race in Brazil 2006.

The BMW Sauber team also handed the best career result to Robert Kubica, who finished second. The Pole climbed on the podium for the second time - he was third in Monza 2006.

So Kubica had to wait 1 year, 6 months and 13 days to climb on the podium again. The longest wait in the history of Formula One belongs to Alexander Wurz, that from British GP, 1997 and the San Marino GP in 2005 had to wait 7 years, 9 months and 11 days.

19 seconds

In today's Formula One, every second counts and it's unusual to see a car that wins by a great margin, like the 19 seconds Kimi Raikkonen put between himself and Robert Kubica. In 2007, only in one race, Malaysia, was the gap higher than 10 seconds between the first and second driver at the finish line. At the time, it was Fernando Alonso who put 17.557 seconds between himself and his then teammate Lewis Hamilton.

To find a bigger gap between the first two we have to go back to Hungary 2006, with 30:837 between Jenson Button and Pedro de la Rosa, in a race that ran in mixed weather conditions.

looking at dry races, the most recent Grand Prix with a finish gap bigger than 10 seconds is the Hungarian GP of 2005, when Kimi Raikkonen won by 35.581 over Michael Schumacher.

Qualifying notes

• Felipe Massa is the 29th driver to record at least 10 pole positions in his Formula One career. He joins Jochen Rindt in the all-time table.

• The last time Ferrari filled the front row was in Belgium last year. During the whole 2007 championship, this was the only time both red cars were in front of everyone else on the grid.

• Lewis Hamilton put an end to his sequence of four straight front-row placements, and recorded his worst grid placement since the European GP in 2007, when he crashed in qualifying and ended up tenth in grid. Setting that accident and the five places penalty received in Malaysia aside, Hamilton always qualified in the top four spots in all the F1 races he contested in.

• The McLarens were demoted to 8th and 9th on grid after penalties, and the last time they started in a worse position was in the Japanese GP of 2006, when Kimi Raikkonen was 11th and Pedro de la Rosa 13th.

• Jarno Trulli would have qualified fifth, but then he was moved up to third thanks to McLaren's penalties. Either way, though, it's the Italian's best qualifying result since Brazil 2006, where he was third.

Race notes

• Kimi Raikkonen scored his 16th win, reaching the 13th spot on the all-time records table, alongside Stirling Moss.

• This is the 41st win for a Finnish driver, which puts Finland alongside Austria as the 6th winningest country. The wins for Austria were recorded by Jochen Rindt (6), Niki Lauda (25) and Gerhard Berger (10), while Finland's were scored by Keke Rosberg (5), Mika Hakkinen (20) and Kimi Raikkonen (16).

• Raikkonen has so far had a string of nine race-finishes in the points - the best of his career. Before this one, he managed to finish eight races in the points only once, from the Hungarian GP in 2005 through Bahrain 2006.

• Nick Heidfeld passed the 150 points scored in career (48th all-time), and he's currently on 151.

• Jarno Trulli's fourth place is his best result since the 2006 US GP.

• Felipe Massa recorded his first back-to-back retirements since Canada and United States, back in 2004. It's the first time since China and Japan 2005 that Massa doesn't score points in two consecutive races.

• This is the first time that Alonso records two straight races without a podium finish since the 2006 German (5th place) and Hungarian Grand Prix (retirement).