Jeddah becomes F1’s 75th different venue, Verstappen could become World Champion for the first time and Alonso could reach 2,000 career points. Here are the milestones and records which could be broken at the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix!
THE MILESTONES
This will be the 1,056th World Championship Formula 1 race. It will be the first Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and the first race held at Jeddah Corniche Circuit.
Saudi Arabia will become the 34th different country to have hosted a round of the F1 World Championship. It will be the second race in succession at which F1 has visited two new countries in a row since the inaugural season in 1950. It’s also the first time since the 1970 Austrian and German Grands Prix that F1 has visited new circuits at two consecutive rounds.
Jeddah Corniche Circuit will become the 75th different venue to have hosted a round of the F1 World Championship. The circuit will become the thirteenth to have hosted a single F1 race.
After this weekend, Saudi Arabia will join Qatar and Morocco as only the third country to have hosted a single Formula 1 race. Morocco hosted the only Moroccan Grand Prix in World Championship history in October 1958.
The 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix will be the first F1 race held on 5th December. The date becomes the 295th day of the calendar year on which a World Championship race has been held. It will be the eighth World Championship race held in the month of December.
This weekend, Valtteri Bottas will make his 100th appearance with the Mercedes team. It will be the 21st occasion on which a driver will reach a century of starts with a single team.
This will be the 99th Grand Prix in which Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas have been team-mates. They will equal David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen as the drivers to have started the second-most races together at the same team.
THE RECORDS TO BREAK
Max Verstappen heads to Saudi Arabia with a mathematical chance of winning the title for the first time. If he does so, he will become the fourth youngest World Champion in F1 history. Only Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were younger when they won the title for the first time.
If Max Verstappen wins the title, it would be the first time that the title has been decided on F1’s first visit to a track since Nelson Piquet claimed his third and final title at the 1987 Japanese Grand Prix, on F1’s first visit to Suzuka. It would be the eleventh time this has occurred in total.
If Red Bull win this weekend, they would take their 75th Grand Prix victory. They would be the sixth team to reach that milestone.
If Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen finish on the podium together, it will be the 20th time that the trio have finished in the top three together. They would be the first trio of drivers to appear together on the podium on twenty occasions.
This weekend, Valtteri Bottas could become the first driver to make 100 consecutive Q3 appearances. He’s yet to miss out on the final stage of qualifying during his 99 starts with Mercedes.
Lewis Hamilton could extend a number of records this weekend. He could become the first driver to have won at 31 different circuits, the first to take pole at 32 venues, the first to record podiums at 35 different tracks and the first to set the fastest lap at 26 different circuits.
If Max Verstappen wins this weekend, he would be the twelfth driver to have won at 15 different circuits in his F1 career.
Michael Schumacher finished on the podium at 27 different circuits during his Formula 1 career. It’s a number which Fernando Alonso equalled at the Qatar Grand Prix and could overtake this weekend. Meanwhile, Sebastian Vettel and Valtteri Bottas could equal Schumacher’s tally of different circuits at which a driver has recorded a top three result.
Neither AlphaTauri driver has been eliminated in Q1 at any of the last six races. Should both Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda reach Q2 this weekend, it will be the first time that the team has gone seven consecutive races without a Q1 exit since their eleven race streak between the 2015 Mexican Grand Prix and the 2016 European Grand Prix.
Fernando Alonso ended a seven-year podium drought at the Qatar Grand Prix. Should he win the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, he would become only the third driver to have scored 2,000 points in his F1 career.
Carlos Sainz has finished all of the last 27 races. If he crosses the finish line again at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, it would be only the seventh time that a driver has scored at 28 races in a row. Sainz can also score points for a fourteenth consecutive race this weekend. If he does so, it will be the 30th occasion on which a driver has scored at fourteen Grand Prix weekends in a row.
If Sainz scores four points, he will overtake Nico Hulkenberg as the driver to have scored the most points without winning a Grand Prix.