Leclerc joins a small club of back-to-back maiden winners, Vettel records a career first and Renault record their best team result since 2008. Here are all the facts and statistics from the 2019 Italian Grand Prix weekend!
MONZA MAGIC
Charles Leclerc won the 2019 Italian Grand Prix, becoming the 37th driver to have won at Monza and the 90th different driver to have stood on the podium at the track.
Charles Leclerc became the first driver since Lewis Hamilton in 2007 to score the first two wins of his career at consecutive events. Alberto Ascari, Peter Collins, Bruce McLaren, Rene Arnoux, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Mika Hakkinen are the other drivers who’ve also won the race immediately after their first victory. If Leclerc wins in Singapore, he’d join Hill and Hakkinen as only the third driver to have won all three of his first Grands Prix at consecutive events.
The Monegasque driver becomes the 76th man to have scored multiple Formula 1 victories and joins a list of eleven other drivers with a total of two career victories. He equals Luigi Musso, Pedro Rodriguez and Johnny Herbert with seven podium finishes.
Charles Leclerc won the Italian Grand Prix by 0.835 seconds. It’s the first time a race at Monza has been won by less than a second since 2002, the tenth time in total at the track.
No team has had more wins at a single circuit than Ferrari have had wins at Monza. The red team extended their number of home victories to nineteen (27 in total in Italy, if you include their wins at the Imola circuit).
POLE FOR LECLERC
Charles Leclerc took pole on Satutday, the fourth of his career. He now has the same pole tally as Mike Hawthorn, Didier Pironi, Jarno Trulli and Giancarlo Fisichella. He’s the 37th different driver to have take pole position at Monza.
For Ferrari, it was their 21st pole position at Monza and the first time the team have taken pole position in consecutive seasons at the Italian Grand Prix since 2003 and 2004.
While the shenanigans in Q3 robbed us of potentially seeing the fastest lap in F1 history, Leclerc’s pole lap was still the fourth fastest qualifying lap of all time. It was just 0.625km/h slower than Kimi Raikkonen’s record from 2018.
Pole position was decided by just 0.039 seconds. It’s the first time pole has been decided by less than a tenth of a second at the Italian Grand Prix since 2008.
ON THE PODIUM
For the eleventh time this year, both Mercedes drivers finished on the podium, with Lewis Hamilton finishing in third place for the first time in 2019. It’s also the first time Hamilton has finished in third at Monza during his career.
Valtteri Bottas recorded his third consecutive Italian Grand Prix podium finish. It was his 41st podium finish in total, equalling the career tally of Felipe Massa. A Finnish driver has finished in second place at Monza in all of the last three seasons.
Lewis Hamilton recorded the 146th podium finish of his career and equalled Michael Schumacher’s record tally of eight podiums at the Italian Grand Prix. He now needs just nine more top three finishes to equal Schumacher’s all-time record of most podiums.
The driver of car number 44 recorded the 44th Fastest Lap of his Formula 1 career. His lap time was 0.733 seconds slower than Rubens Barrichello’s race lap record from 2004. It’s the fourth time this season, after China, Germany and Belgium, that neither the Track Record nor the Lap Record was beaten over the course of the race weekend.
The Italian Grand Prix was the first race which Lewis Hamilton didn’t lead a lap of since the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. It’s one of only three in the last 22 Grands Prix which the five-time World Champion hasn’t led.
QUALIFYING FACTS
With both Williams drivers eliminated in Q1, this was the first time the team hasn’t appeared in Q3 at the Italian Grand Prix since 2013.
Renault reached Q3 with both cars for the first time at the Italian Grand Prix since 2011.
Max Verstappen recorded Red Bull’s first Q1 exit at the Italian Grand Prix since David Coulthard in 2007. It’s Verstappen’s first Q1 exit since the 2018 Monaco Grand Prix.
Lance Stroll appeared in Q3 for the first time in 2019. It’s the fifth top ten qualification of his career, and his first since last year’s Italian Grand Prix. The Canadian has never failed to reach Q3 at Monza, meaning three of his five top ten qualifications have come at this track.
Max Verstappen became the 18th driver to be out in Q1 in 2019, while Lance Stroll became the 18th driver to reach Q3 this year.
After Sergio Perez was beaten by Lance Stroll in qualifying, George Russell is now the only driver to have beaten his team-mate in qualifying at every round of the season.
SUNDAY STATS
Renault enjoyed a highly successful weekend, with Daniel Ricciardo finishing fourth and Nico Hulkenberg coming home in fifth place. It’s Ricciardo’s first top five finish since leaving Red Bull and Hulkenberg’s first top five finish since the 2018 German Grand Prix. The 2019 Italian Grand Prix marks the Renault team’s best result since Fernando Alonso won the 2008 Japanese Grand Prix. Team-mate Nelson Piquet Jnr finished fourth on that day.
This weekend Nico Hulkenberg became the eighteenth driver in Formula 1 history to have scored over 500 career points, with his fifth place finish taking his overall total to 505 points. That means that Hulkenberg has scored as many points in his 170-race career as the Mercedes team have scored so far in the 2019 season.
As if a Ferrari winning wasn’t enough, the Italian crowd were also able to celebrate Antonio Giovinazzi’s ninth place result. The result saw Giovinazzi become the first Italian driver to score points at his home Grand Prix since 2006, when Giancarlo Fisichella finished fourth, and Jarno Trulli finished in seventh.
Charles Leclerc and George Russell were the only drivers who finished the 2019 Italian Grand Prix in the same positions as they started.
For the first time in his career, Sebastian Vettel recorded a thirteenth place finish. 10th, 14th and 20th are the only other top twenty positions in which he’s yet to finish during his career.
The 2019 Italian Grand Prix marked Kimi Raikkonen’s 306th appearance. It means he’s now equalled Jenson Button for fourth in the all-time list of most Grand Prix starts.
Max Verstappen became only the second driver in the last 41 years to have scored points having started from nineteenth at Monza. The only other driver to do so in Daniel Ricciardo in 2015.
The 2019 Italian Grand Prix was the thirteenth shortest Formula 1 race in history, lasting for a total of 75 minutes and 26.665 seconds. It was the seventh shortest race at the track.
THE NON-FINISHERS
Carlos Sainz recorded McLaren’s fourth retirement in three years at the Italian Grand Prix. In more positive news, Lando Norris picked up the team’s first point at the track since 2014.
Kevin Magnussen recorded his first Italian Grand Prix retirement, as did the Haas team. With Romain Grosjean finishing only sixteenth, Haas are still yet to score a point at Monza.
Daniil Kvyat recorded his second DNF at the Italian Grand Prix. It was Toro Rosso’s third retirement in four years at Monza. With Pierre Gasly finishing eleventh, this is the sixth consecutive season where the team have failed to score at the circuit.
