Post-GP Stats Analysis: France

4x4

Eighth career win (29th all-time spot) and first time in the lead of the Formula One World Championship for the Brazilian driver. Felipe Massa is the 58th driver in F1 history to lead the championship and the first Brazilian since Ayrton Senna.

Massa is the fourth championship leader in the last four races after Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton and Robert Kubica. In 59 seasons, this is the first time that there is such a sequence.

In the past, there were four championship leaders in 1974 (Denny Hulme, Clay Regazzoni, Niki Lauda and Emerson Fittipaldi); 1982 (Alain Prost, John Watson, Didier Pironi and Keke Rosberg); 1986 (Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna, Prost and Nigel Mansell); and 1987 (Prost, Mansell, Senna and Piquet). But in all these cases, the leaders did not alternate at the top in four successive races.

Felipe's close calls

In France, Massa lost another pole position by a time difference of less than one tenth of a second.

Winning or losing the pole spot by such a small difference is becoming a peculiarity for the Brazilian driver. Since he joined Ferrari in 2006, there have been fourteen qualifying rounds decided by less than a tenth, and Massa in this chart is present nine times - four times winning pole and five losing it:

Fernando 500

Finishing eighth, Fernando Alonso became the sixth driver in F1 history to score at least 500 points - after Michael Schumacher, Prost, Senna, David Coulthard and Rubens Barrichello. Curiously, Raikkonen stopped at 499 after the French Grand Prix.

Alonso, with an average of 4.5 points per race, stands fourth in the all-time ranking of average points gained per race among the drivers that ran at least ten races. At the top of the chart stands Lewis Hamilton with 5.88 points per race, followed by Juan Manuel Fangio (5.64) and then Michael Schumacher (5.52).

Qualifying notes

• After missing pole in Canada, Ferrari claimed their 200th pole position in Magny Cours.

• Kimi Raikkonen conquered his 16th pole, sitting alongside Stirling Moss at the 15th spot on the all-time charts.

• It's the first time since the 2006 Japanese Grand Prix that both McLarens started from a double-digit grid position. Back then, Raikkonen was 11th and Pedro de la Rosa 13th.

Heikki Kovalainen didn't qualify outside the top ten since Brazil last year (17th) and Hamilton - due to his penalty - had to start from the worst qualifying spot of his career, 13th.

Hamilton's worst grid position before France was the 10th place he recorded in Europe last year, after a massive shunt in qualifying.

• The sixth place secured by Mark Webber and the seventh by his teammate Coulthard are the fourth best-ever performance by Red Bull in qualifying.

The team's best result was in Japan in 2005, with Christian Klien in fourth and Coulthard in sixth; then in Australia 2005 (debut race) with a fifth for DC and a sixth for the Austrian; and then China 2007, with a fifth for Coulthard and a seventh for Webber.

• Best career grid position for Timo Glock: eighth. His previous best was tenth, recorded in Malaysia and Monaco earlier this season.

• Best qualifying spot ever also for Nelsinho Piquet: ninth - for the first time inside the top-10.

• Sebastien Bourdais also enjoyed his best qualifying spot: 14th. Previous best was a 15th, recorded in Bahrain this year.

• Only twice has Nico Rosberg had to start from a lower position on the grid in his entire career. At Indianapolis in 2006 he was 21st, and in Europe in the same year he was 22nd after a ten-grid penalty for engine change.

• Worst combined qualifying spots for Honda since Turkey last year, when Jenson Button and Barrichello were on the back row, 21st and 22nd, after a double engine change penalty.

Race notes

• Massa is the 26th driver to record at least 3,000km in the lead in his F1 career. After France, the count for Felipe is 3,013km. At the top of the chart sits Michael Schumacher with 24,127 kilometers in the lead.

• The sequence of fastest laps by Kimi Raikkonen keeps growing and now the Finn, reaching five fastest laps in a row, is tied at the second all-time place with Michael Schumacher.

• Raikkonen is back in the points after a drought that lasted two races. To find a longer one in Kimi's career we have to go back to 2004, when he didn't score points for three consecutive races: Spain, Monaco and Europe.

• Eighth career podium for Jarno Trulli, who didn't finish in the top-three since the 2005 Spanish Grand Prix. It's also the seventh podium for Toyota - the first since Australia 2006, when Ralf Schumacher was third.

• First career points for Nelsinho Piquet.

• Worst career finishing position for Hamilton, 10th. It's the first time that Lewis didn't score points in consecutive races. The ten-point gap to the top of the championship standings is the biggest of his short career.

• With 19 drivers classified out of 20, the 2008 French Grand Prix recorded the third-highest percentage of drivers at the finish.

At the top there are three races: Netherlands 1961 (20 drivers), USA 2005 (6), and Italy 2005 (20) in which all the drivers finished the race.

In second place is Turkey 2007, with 21 drivers out of 22 (95,45%); and in third Great Britain 2005 and France 2008 with 19 out of 20 (95%).

• 40th straight race in the points for Ferrari. The top sequence is 55, set also by Ferrari from Malaysia 1999 to Malaysia 2003.

• For the first time in the last five races, a McLaren car didn't lead at least one lap of the race.