Post-GP Stats Analysis: Spain

And for the eighth time straight...

...In the Spanish Grand Prix, the race is won by the pole-sitter. The last time this race was won from a different grid spot dates back to 2000, when the pole-sitter was Michael Schumacher and the winner was Mika Hakkinen, who lined up alongside the German on the front row. The 2000 race is the only one in Spain since 1997 that was not won from pole.

Hats off to Kimi

Kimi Raikkonen gained his second hat-trick (pole, win and fastest lap) of his F1 career after last year's Australian Grand Prix, equalling the score of his teammate Felipe Massa, who recorded his two hat-tricks last year, in Bahrain and Spain.

At the top of the all-time chart, with the most number of hat-tricks, is Michael Schumacher, with 22.

With his 51st podium finish, Raikkonen equals his countryman Mika Hakkinen at the ninth all-time spot. Next stop is Niki Lauda, with 54 podiums.

Qualifying notes

• All the drivers who participated in the third qualifying session set a time within one second of pole position. The last time ten drivers were inside one second of pole position was three years ago, in the 2005 US Grand Prix.

• Kimi Raikkonen recorded his 15th pole position, and he is now in the 16th spot on the all-time records. Raikkonen didn't start from pole since Belgium last year.

• Fernando Alonso started again from the front row, the first since the 2007 Japanese Grand Prix.

• A Renault car started again from the front row, for the first time since the 2006 Chinese Grand Prix.

• For the first time in his career, Lewis Hamilton is recording his third straight race behind the front row. Hamilton started his first two races in 2007 from the fourth spot, and from the following race on he never left the front row for more than one Grand Prix.

• Spain saw the worst qualifying spot for Nick Heidfeld since the 2007 British GP, which was the German's worst qualifying performance of the entire season.

• Spain also saw Nelsinho Piquet qualifying in the top 10 for the first time since his F1 debut.

Race notes

• for the first time in 2008 two track records were beaten. Felipe Massa lowered his previous record in qualifying from 1:20.597 (set last year) to 1:20.584; and in the race Kimi Raikkonen set a best lap of 1:21.670 - while Massa last year recorded 1:22.680. It has to be said that in the other tracks the records were set with 3000cc engines, thus the difficulty in breaking records.

• Lewis Hamilton is back on the podium and limits his streak of races outside the podium to two. In his career so far this happened only twice, in China and Brazil last year; and in Malaysia and Bahrain this year.

• Nick Heidfeld put an end to his string of five races in the points, which started in China last year.

• For the first time this season, a BMW Sauber driver is not on the podium.

• This is the third straight race in the points for Mark Webber. The last time the Australian lived a similar streak was back in 2005/2006, when he was in the points from the 2005 Japanese GP to the 2006 Bahrain GP, for three races as well. Webber's best sequence of races in the points is four, set from Bahrain to Monaco in 2005.

• Jenson Button is back in the points for the first time since last year's Chinese GP.

• For the third time out of four races this year, Sebastian Vettel retired on the first lap. To date, the German has raced some laps (39) only in Malaysia. Vettel is at his fifth straight retirement.

• With Sebastien Bourdais completing only seven laps, the balance of kilometers run in the races for Toro Rosso after four races is a complete disaster. They were able to run only 843 kilometers out of the scheduled 2466, for a running percentage of 34.1%. At the other end of the chart, BMW Sauber raced for 2408 kms (97,6%). Last year Toro Rosso were the team with the lowest percentage of kilometers in the races, 65.1% (6751 out of 10366).

• With Heikki Kovalainen's accident and Heidfeld finishing outside the points, Kimi Raikkonen is the only driver who so far scored points in every race this season. In 2007, four races into the season, the drivers that had always scored points were three: Hamilton, Alonso and Massa.

• With the laps run in the Spanish Grand Prix, Williams is the fourth car manufacturer in the history of Formula One that surpassed the milestone of 50,000 race laps. The all-time chart is now as follows:

Ferrari   87,026
McLaren   66,590
Lotus     55,918
Williams  50,078