Here are all the facts and statistics you need to know about the Red Bull Ring ahead of the 2019 Austrian Grand Prix!
?? RACE WINNERS
Since 1970, there have been 30 Formula One races held at the track now known as the Red Bull Ring. During that time, 23 different drivers have taken a victory at the circuit.
Alain Prost has the most wins here with three, while McLaren are the team with the most victories at the track with six. British and French drivers are tied for the most wins at the Austrian track, with five apiece, while German drivers lie just behind on four victories. Ford-powered cars have taken the most victories at this circuit, with nine. The last win by a Ford engine at this track was in 1982.
Alain Prost, Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg are the only drivers to have taken back-to-back victories at the Austrian Grand Prix. No driver has taken more than two consecutive wins at the circuit.
There are three previous winners of the Austrian Grand Prix on the 2019 grid. Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen each have one victory here.
Only one race here has been won by over a lap. That was in 1986, when Alain Prost finished over a lap ahead of everyone else for McLaren. The smallest win margin here was a tiny 0.05 seconds in 1982. That’s the margin by which Elio de Angelis won for Lotus, after holding off Keke Rosberg as the pair battled for their debut race victories on the final lap.
Thirteen races here have been won by less than five seconds, including three since Formula One returned to the track in 2014.
From the last ten Austrian Grands Prix, the average win margin has been 3.720 seconds.
?? ON THE PODIUM
Fifty different drivers have finished on the podium at this circuit.
David Coulthard has the most podium finishes here, with five. Coulthard’s five podiums came in consecutive years between 1997 and 2001. Ferrari are the team with the most podiums at the circuit, with their cars finishing in the top three on 23 occasions. Meanwhile, it’s British drivers who lead the way in the all-time list of nations’ top three finishes here. They have fifteen compared to Brazil’s thirteen.
There are six drivers on the 2019 grid who have previously finished on the Austrian Grand Prix podium. Lewis Hamitlon and Kimi Raikkonen are tied for the most podium finishes from the current field with three each. Valtteri Bottas, Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel have finished in the top three twice here previously, while Daniel Ricciardo scored his only Austrian Grand Prix podium finish so far in 2017.
The furthest back a podium finish at this track has come from is seventeenth on the grid. This happened at the very first race at the track, when Rolf Stommelen finished in third place having started down in seventeenth.
There have been two races here where all the top three qualifiers have gone on to finish in the top three in the Grand Prix. It happened in 1999 and 2000. The 2000 Austrian Grand Prix is the only race at the circuit in which the top three qualifiers finished in the same order as they started.
While pole is the grid slot which has seen the most podium finishes (17), second and fourth on the grid have each had fifteen top three finishes, while third on the grid has had just eight.
?? POLESITTERS
There have been nineteen different polesitters at this track since 1970.
Niki Lauda, Rene Arnoux and Nelson Piquet are all tied for the most poles in Austria, with three each. Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas have the opportunity to join that group in 2019. Ferrari are the team with the most poles here, with seven. It’s Brazil who lead the way for the most poles for a nation at this track, with Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet, Rubens Barrichello and Felipe Massa taking seven poles between them at the circuit.
Each with two poles, Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas are the only drivers on the 2019 grid to have started from the front in Austria.
Emerson Fittipaldi, Niki Lauda, Rene Arnoux, Mika Hakkinen, Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas are the five drivers who have taken back-to-back poles at this circuit. Rene Arnoux is the only driver to have taken more than two consecutive poles here. He set the Saturday pace for three consecutive years in 1979, 1980 and 1981. Valtteri Bottas could become the second driver to take three consecutive poles at the track in 2019.
The track record at the Red Bull Ring is 1:03.130, which was last year’s pole time set by Valtteri Bottas.
The largest gap between the slowest and fastest driver in a qualifying session at this track is 20.99 seconds, which was the difference in lap time in 1976 between James Hunt on pole and Loris Kessel who qualified in 25th.
Valtteri Bottas took pole by 0.019 seconds at the Red Bull Ring last season. That’s the smallest ever pole margin at the track. Meanwhile, James Hunt holds the record for the largest pole margin here, lapping 0.82 seconds faster than anyone else in 1976.
Pole has been decided by less than a tenth on nine occasions at the circuit, including in three of the five events since 2014.
The average pole margin from the last ten Austrian Grands Prix has been 0.192 seconds.
?? SATURDAY TO SUNDAY
Just nine of the thirty races held at this track have been won from pole, while sixteen have been won from the front row of the grid. That means fourteen races at this circuit have been won from third or further back.
The polesitter has finished on the podium here without winning the race on eight occasions.
The furthest back win at the track came in 1977, when Alan Jones won for Shadow from fourteenth on the grid. It was the Shadow team’s only F1 victory.
?? SUNDAY STATS
There has only been one event at the track where more than ten drivers have finished on the lead lap. That happened in 2014, when eleven cars completed all 71 laps of the race. Alain Prost’s victory in 1986 is the only time just one driver has finished on the lead lap. In 2018, only the three podium finishers completed all the laps of the race.
The Safety Car has made an appearance in seven races at this track. The most Safety Car periods in one race here is two, which happened in 2002.
Four races at the Red Bull Ring have been affected by rain.
David Coulthard has the most fastest laps at this circuit. He’s set the Sunday pace on three occasions in Austria. Lewis Hamilton could equal that tally this season.
From the 703 cars which have started a race here, 377 have reached the chequered flag, giving an overall finish rate of 53.63%. The highest number of cars to finish a race here is nineteen, which happened in 2014. Meanwhile, the least number of cars to reach the chequered flag is seven, which happened in 1982.
Five races at the track have been red-flagged. The last time a race was red-flagged in Austria was in 1987.
In total, there have been 1,791 Grand Prix racing laps at this circuit so far. The ninth lap of the 2019 event will be the 1,800th racing lap of the circuit.
?? CHAMPIONSHIP GLORY
Jackie Stewart is the only driver to have been crowned World Champion in Austria. He won his second title at this track in 1971.
The winner of the Austrian Grand Prix has gone on to win the title in the same year on just eight occasions. From the thirty times that a race has been held at the track, the leader of the championship after the Grand Prix has gone on to win the title nineteen times.