Post-GP Statistical Analysis: Monaco

Second youngest podium ever

The one recorded in Monaco this year is the second youngest podium ever in the history of Formula One, with Lewis Hamilton, Robert Kubica and Felipe Massa averaging 24 years, 7 months and 23 days.

The absolute record is only slightly younger: in the 2003 Hungarian Grand Prix, the combined age of Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya was 24 years, 7 months and 12 days.

An englishman in Monaco

England has waited a long tine for a win in Monaco, since 1969, when Graham Hill won his fifth Monaco Grand Prix on a Lotus/Ford.

This is Hamilton's sixth win, but an important one: it's the first one he's taken not starting from pole position.

Heidfeld sequence is over

After 27 straight races, Nick Heidfeld falls off the first 10 drivers on the grid. Nick was able to qualify in the top 10 since the 2006 Turkish Grand Prix.

The absolute record belongs to Ayrton Senna who since the 1985 Dutch Grand Prix was always able to qualify inside the top ten until his last race in Imola 1994, for an amazing total of 137 straight races.

Second is Alain Prost, who was inside the top 10 for 109 races - from the 1983 Canadian Grand Prix to the same race seven years later. Third is David Coulthard, with a streak of 72 races from the 1998 German Grand Prix to the same race four years later.

Among the current drivers, the best active sequence belongs to Lewis Hamilton, who in his brief Formula One career has always qualified in the top 10 for a total of 23 races thus far.

Times they are a-Changin'

During the Monaco Grand Prix, the fastest lap was improved 61 times, from the second lap when Massa recorded 1:37.079 to the 74th lap, when finally Raikkonen set the mark at 1:16.689.

From 1982, the year when electronic timekeeping was officially introduced, onwards, this is an absolute record. The previous race that counted so many changes in the fastest laps was the 1996 Brazilian Grand Prix, which was run in similar conditions, where the fastest lap changed 44 times.

There is also a record related to the 1967 Canadian Grand Prix, when the fastest lap was improved 52 times, however lap-time data before 1982 is fragmented and in no way as reliable as it is nowadays.

Qualifying notes

• 12th pole position for Massa. For the first time this year a driver is able to score back-to-back poles.

• Ferrari filled the front row in Monaco for the first time since 1979, when Jody Scheckter was on pole and Gilles Villeneuve was alongside him. Only in two other occasions Ferrari managed to fill the front row, in 1974 and 1976, both times with Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni.

• For the second straight race, Ferrari and McLaren monopolised the first two rows of the grid. Last year these two teams occupied the first four slots ten times out of seventeen. The last time the two Ferraris were in front of the two McLarens was in the 2007 Belgian GP.

• Worst qualifying position in Monaco for Fernando Alonso since 2003, when he was eighth.

• For the third straight race, Jarno Trulli qualified eighth.

• After Monaco, Trulli, Alonso and Kubica remain the only drivers who this season always outqualified their teammates.

• Worst qualifying spot in Monaco for Rubens Barrichello since 1994, when he was in the same position. The Brazilian fared worse only the year before (16th) at his debut in Monte Carlo.

• Before Coulthard's penalty for gearbox change, seven drivers had qualified on the same spot they occupied in the Turkish Grand Prix. They were Massa, Hamilton, Kubica, Alonso, Trulli, Coulthard and Piquet.

Race notes

• Kimi Raikkonen finished the race in ninth place and his sequence of races in the points stopped at 12 and lasted from the 2007 Hungarian Grand Prix to the last race in Turkey. Before Monaco, Raikkonen was the only driver that had set points in every round of the 2008 Championship.

• Raikkonen set his 28th fastest race lap, reaching the fourth all-time spot and tying with Jim Clark. The record holder is Michael Schumacher, with 76 fastest race laps.

• For the second time this year, the leader at the end of the first lap was not the winner of the race. Unluckily for him, the driver is always Massa, who also led at the start in Malaysia, before being passed by his teammate at his first pitstop and then eventually spinning off the race.

• Robert Kubica equalled his best career result, a second place, which he recorded for the first time in Malaysia this year.

• Best result for Webber since last year's European Grand Prix, when he was third. Mark is at his fifth straight race in the points, a personal best in his career, which started 109 races ago;

• Best result for Sebastian Vettel since the 2007 Chinese Grand Prix when he was fourth. That was also the last race where he scored points before Monaco.

• Barrichello is back in the points after a drought that lasted since the beginning of the 2007 season for a total of 22 races, the longest of his career.

• Kazuki Nakajima after Monaco counts seven points in the Championship and already matched his father's season best. Satoru's best year was 1987, when he scored exactly seven points, albeit with a very different points system. The season record for a Japanese driver was set in 2004, when Takuma Sato recorded 34 points.

• For the first time since 2003 the leader at the end of the first lap doesn't win in Monaco. This year happened to Massa, in 2003 to Ralf Schumacher, who finished only fourth.

• Jarno Trulli started his 187th race, equalling Nigel Mansell at the 12th all-time spot.

Off topic

A singular occurrence happened in the Monte Carlo weekend: Bruno Senna, Ayrton Senna's nephew, won his first Monaco race in the GP2 Series on the same day his uncle recorded his last Monaco win in 1993, the 23rd of May.