At the first F1 race to be held at the Nurburgring since 2013, Hamilton has another chance to equal Schumacher’s win record and Red Bull could become the fifth team to have scored in 250 races. Here are the milestones and records which could be broken at the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix!
THE MILESTONES
This weekend’s race marks the 1,029th World Championship race, the first running of the Eifel Grand Prix and the 41st World Championship race held at the Nurburgring.
This will be Formula 1’s first visit to the Nurburgring since the 2013 German Grand Prix.
The Nurburgring will become the first venue to have hosted F1 races with four different titles. In addition to the Eifel Grand Prix, the circuit has previously hosted the German Grand Prix, the European Grand Prix and the Luxembourg Grand Prix.
The 2020 Eifel Grand Prix will mark Valtteri Bottas’ 150th race start. He’ll overtake Rene Arnoux as the driver to have started the 40th most F1 races.
Kimi Raikkonen will become the driver to have started the most Formula 1 races at the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix, overtaking Rubens Barrichello’s record. This will be Raikkonen’s 323rd start, or his 324th if you include the 2001 Belgian Grand Prix.
At the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix, Renault will equal the Brabham team’s tally of 394 Grand Prix appearances. Brabham made their 394th and final race start at the 1992 Hungarian Grand Prix.
The 2020 Eifel Grand Prix will mark Lewis Hamilton’s 151st appearance with Mercedes. It’s the same number of races as Kimi Raikkonen spent at Ferrari – second in the all time list of longest lasting team and driver partnerships.
THE RECORDS TO BREAK
Lewis Hamilton will equal Michael Schumacher’s all-time win record if he wins the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix. Schumacher won his 91st and final Grand Prix in China in 2006, but has held the record for most wins in F1 since winning his 52nd race at the 2001 Belgian Grand Prix. Read more: A History of F1’s All-Time Win Record.
Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel are the only previous winners of a Formula 1 race at the Nurburgring on the 2020 grid. Should either Hamilton or Vettel win the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix, they will become the ninth different driver to record multiple victories at the Nurburgring. Should anyone else win, they will become the 28th different driver to have won at the circuit.
If Lewis Hamilton takes pole position, this will be the first time that he has taken six consecutive pole positions since doing so between the 2016 United States and 2017 Chinese Grands Prix. If he does so, he will be only the second driver – after Ayrton Senna – to have taken six consecutive pole positions on three separate occasions.
If anyone other than Lewis Hamilton or Kimi Raikkonen takes pole position for the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix, they will become the 25th different driver to have taken pole at the Nurburgring.
Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton and Romain Grosjean are the only drivers on the current grid to have taken a podium finish at the Nurburgring. If anyone else finishes in the top three at the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix, they will become the 60th driver to have finished on the podium at the circuit.
If either Max Verstappen or Alex Albon score this weekend, it will be the 250th race in which a Red Bull driver has scored a point. Red Bull would become only the fifth team to have scored at 250 Grands Prix.
Should Red Bull lead a single lap of the Eifel Grand Prix, they will become the fourth team – after Ferrari, McLaren and Williams – to have led 100 laps at the Nurburgring.
Ferrari have had at least one driver fail to qualify in the top ten in all of the last six races. Should Sebastian Vettel and/or Charles Leclerc fail to reach Q3 at the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix, this would be the first time that at least one Ferrari driver has failed to qualify in the top ten at six consecutive races since the seven races at the end of the 2009 season.
If a Mercedes-powered car picks up a point at the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix, this will be the 228th consecutive race in which Mercedes engines have picked up at least one point. That would equal the record for most consecutive races in which an engine manufacturer has scored, set by Ford Cosworth engines between the 1967 Canadian Grand Prix and the 1983 Dutch Grand Prix. The last race in which no Mercedes-powered car scored was the 2008 Japanese Grand Prix.
