Toro Rosso equal Benetton’s number of starts, a chance for Ferrari to reach 500 Belgian GP points and a chance for Hamilton to join Senna and Hakkinen in taking three consecutive Spa poles. Here are the records which are up for grabs over the 2019 Belgian Grand Prix weekend!
The Milestones and Numbers
This will be the 1010th Formula 1 Grand Prix. It’ll be the 75th Belgian Grand Prix since the event was first held in 1925, and the 65th Belgian Grand Prix to be held as a round of the F1 championship. This will be the 52nd F1 race to be held at the Spa Francorchamps circuit.
This weekend, Toro Rosso will equal the Benetton team’s number of Grand Prix appearances. Benetton made 260 race starts between the 1986 Brazilian Grand Prix and the 2001 Japanese Grand Prix, after which they became Renault.
The third lap of the 2019 Belgian Grand Prix will be the 2,019th racing lap of the Spa Francorchamps circuit in F1 history.
The Records to Beat:
Ferrari and Mercedes-powered cars are currently tied for the most poles for an engine manufacturer at the Belgian Grand Prix. If one of the manufacturers takes another pole here this weekend, they’ll move the outright pole record in Belgium to 14.
If Ferrari lead 25 laps of the race, they’ll become the first team to have led 6,000km of the Belgian Grand Prix. If they score at least 6.5 points, they’ll become the first team to have scored 500 points at the Belgian Grand Prix.
If Lewis Hamilton out-scores Sebastian Vettel, he’ll become the driver to have scored the most points at the Belgian Grand Prix. Vettel has scored 139 points here compared to Hamilton’s 134. Meanwhile, a podium finish for Kimi Raikkonen would see him become the fifth driver to have scored 100 points at the Belgian Grand Prix.
If Lewis Hamilton takes pole this weekend, it’ll be only the third time in F1’s history that a driver has taken pole at the Spa Francorchamps circuit in three consecutive seasons. Ayrton Senna and Mika Hakkinen are the only the other drivers to have taken more than two consecutive poles at the track.
A win for McLaren would see them equal Ferrari as the most successful team at the Spa Francorchamps circuit. They currently have twelve wins at the track compared to Ferrari’s thirteen.
Should he win, Sebastian Vettel will become the eighth different driver to have taken consecutive victories at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. If Vettel were to win, he’d be only the second driver to have taken consecutive victories on multiple occasions at the track. Michael Schumacher is the only other driver to have done so.
