The 2006 Season Facts & Stats

The 56th Formula One World Championship featured a classic duel between two men who will go down in history among the sport's icons.

Spain's Fernando Alonso became the youngest double world champion ever, ironically toppling the record previously held by Michael Schumacher, the man whom he beat to the title. Alonso was 25 years and 85 days old at Interlagos, whereas Schumacher was 26 years and 292 days when he wrapped up title number two at the 1995 Pacific Grand Prix.

Alonso's career is eerily reminiscent of Schumacher's at the same point. Schumacher drove for Benetton, which morphed into Renault. Both scored their second consecutive world championship while driving with Renault engines, and both left the team after winning that second title, in order to join an under-performing top team.

Having said that, Alonso's gamble is probably not quite as big as Schumacher's was when he signed for Ferrari in 1996. Although McLaren didn't win a race in 2006, Ron Dennis's team won ten times in 2005. Ferrari only managed two wins in five years before Schumacher arrived.

Schumacher ended his career with 91 wins, ahead of Alain Prost (51), Ayrton Senna (41) and Nigel Mansell (31). Seven of the German's wins came this year, the most he has ever won in a season without actually taking the title.

Indeed, it is the second consecutive year in which the runner-up has won that many races (following on from Kimi Raikkonen in 2005). Prior to that, it has only ever happened in 1984 and 1988 - with Prost holding the honors in both cases. This indicates that under the current points system, consistency is more important than ever.

Schumacher finally surpassed Ayrton Senna on the all-time pole position list at this year's San Marino Grand Prix, ironically on the track where Senna set the record for most poles at one circuit, eight, and at the track where he was killed in 1994.

Schumacher beat the record through sheer longevity, as it took him 236 appearances to do it (average of one pole in every 3.57 races). Senna's 65 poles were scored in just 162 (one pole per 2.49 races). Using that average, Senna would have taken exactly 100 pole positions if his career had been as long as Schumacher's (250 races).

Schumacher also had a chance to snatch Senna's record for most poles at one track this season, but he missed out on what would have been a ninth pole at Suzuka by 0.112 seconds. However, he retires with almost every major and minor success record imaginable, going from the obvious (most wins, 91, and most titles, seven) to the less obvious (most wins from pole, 40), and the downright obscure - 14 years, 1 month and 1 day elapsed between his first win (Belgium 1992) and his last (China 2006), two years more than second-placed Alain Prost.

Moving back to Alonso, the Spaniard only started from the front row six times in 2006 - all of them pole positions. Moreover, five of them were consecutive (from the European to the Canadian GPs). Surprisingly, Schumacher never had a streak like that in any one season, and it was the first for any driver since Mika Hakkinen scored six in a row back in 1999.

This statistic helped Alonso go longer than any other driver this season before anybody passed him on-track, and even then it had a whiff of tactics about it - teammate Giancarlo Fisichella overtook him at Indianapolis, the tenth round of the championship.

Fisichella and Schumacher both passed Alonso at Shanghai, as he struggled with the wrong tyre choice, but these were the only times all year when we saw somebody pass the world champion in an on-track battle.

Fernando Alonso fights to stay ahead of Renault teammate Giancarlo Fisichella and the Ferrari of Michael Schumacher © XPB/LAT

Included among Alonso's wins this year was the 100th Grand Prix victory for Michelin in Canada, with whom the Spaniard has taken all of his 15 GP victories. With the company now withdrawn from F1, Alonso will probably forever remain one shy of Prost's record of 16 Michelin-shod victories.

While Alonso and Schumacher hogged the majority of the limelight, there were statistical achievements by all of the protagonists at some point during 2006. In Bahrain, Nico Rosberg stunned the world by becoming the youngest man ever to set a fastest lap in a race, ahead 20 years 228 days - and on his Grand Prix debut no less. He was also the third youngest man ever to score points (behind Ricardo Rodriguez and Jenson Button).

His debut stood out in an otherwise forgettable year, in which he suffered nine retirements, six of which came in the opening 10 laps of the race. Williams teammate Mark Webber scored as many points in his final season for the team (seven) as he did in his last season with Jaguar in 2004. At the Nurburgring, the two drivers lined up 19th and 22nd, the lowest for Frank Williams as a team owner in 31 years, and he had his worst season since the debut of Williams Grand Prix Engineering in 1978.

McLaren massively underperformed in 2006, and the situation was not helped by Juan Pablo Montoya's departure after Indianapolis. That was a race in which he ran into the back of Kimi Raikkonen, the first time in history that both McLarens retired on the opening lap of a race. 35-year-old replacement Pedro de la Rosa went on to become the oldest podium debutante since Jean Pierre Jabouille in 1979, when he was second at the Hungaroring.

Raikkonen was at least able to give McLaren their 125th pole position at Monza, and he led 54 laps in 2006, more than twice as many as Jenson Button (25), despite not winning a race. All but six of Button's laps were led in his victorious Hungarian GP, but nobody outscored the Briton in the last six races of 2006 - despite his win also being his only podium in that period.

Hungary was obviously the high point of Honda's season, bringing their first win as an engine supplier since Adelaide 1992, and first as a constructor since Monza 1967. No Japanese manufacturer had won since then, despite Toyota's best efforts.

Indeed, Toyota never truly threatened for a victory at any time this year, with Ralf Schumacher's third place in Australia their only podium finish. Schumacher Jr scored in 14 races last year but only in half as many this term, while Jarno Trulli didn't score at all in the first eight rounds. However, back-to-back top three qualifications at the end of the season suggests that the team could be in good shape come 2007, when all their competitors will also be on Bridgestones.

While it wouldn't have made the season a success, it will annoy Toyota that they finished one point behind BMW-Sauber in the constructors' championship. In their first season of ownership, BMW scored two podiums in the space of three races, something Sauber had never managed in any one of their 13 seasons before.

Unlike McLaren, who seemed to lose momentum after Juan Pablo Montoya's departure, a driver change had a massive effect on the Swiss-German squad. Jacques Villeneuve left the team unceremoniously, but not before Robert Kubica had already made a name for himself in the Hungarian GP.

Robert Kubica en route to his first podium for BMW-Sauber at the Italian Grand Prix © LAT

He was briefly the 55th man to score points on an F1 debut until he was disqualified, but he then became the first man to qualify in the top ten for his opening four races since Villeneuve himself did the same in 1996. Kubica's best performance was at Monza, becoming the second-youngest man ever to score a podium, aged 22 years and 277 days.

Proving that youth is becoming a theme at BMW, Kubica's replacement as third driver, Sebastian Vettel, now holds the record as the youngest man ever to appear in an F1 event, as he was just 19 years and 53 days old when he took to the track on Friday in Istanbul. As if that weren't enough, he then topped the timesheets for good measure.

Red Bull Racing achieved their first podium finish this season, when David Coulthard was third in the Monaco Grand Prix. It was a race in which the Ferrari-powered team were constantly ahead of the Ferrari team, courtesy of Michael Schumacher's moment of madness in qualifying. Felipe Massa crashed on his first qualifying lap, leaving the Ferraris on the back row of the grid for the first time ever.

Coulthard therefore led the Ferrari-powered attack, and his podium was the first time a Ferrari-badged engine had scored a podium finish in anything other than a Ferrari car. Of course, Sauber scored podiums with a Ferrari engine from 1997-2003, but it was badged as a Petronas.

Next season will see Red Bull Racing switch to Renault engines, reuniting the Coulthard/Renault/Adrian Newey combination seen at Williams in 1994-95. The Ferrari engines will go to sister team Toro Rosso, while Spyker will also use the Italian power plants next season.

Previously known as Jordan, the team became Midland MF1 at the start of 2006, and then the Spyker MF1 team by the end of it. Tiago Monteiro and Christijan Albers acquired the annoying habit of being passed by Super Aguri drivers at the start of races this year. Takuma Sato passed a Midland on the first lap ten times in 18 races, although his teammates were less successful. The nadir was Yuji Ide's lunge at Christijan Albers at Imola, which sent the Dutchman into a series of barrel-rolls.

For Super Aguri, merely showing up in Bahrain was a miracle in itself, as only a matter of months had passed since the announcement of their entry for 2006. While Sato was able to rebuild his reputation with a series of gritty performances, latter-day teammate Sakon Yamamoto had a nightmare F1 baptism, by becoming the first man ever to retire from his first two races without getting beyond lap 2.