Formula One returns after the summer break for the thirteenth round of the season at the legendary Spa Francorchamps circuit. Here are all the stats you need ahead of the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix!
?? SPA RACE WINNERS
There have been fifty Formula One races held at the Spa Francorchamps circuit. During that time, 26 different drivers have won a race here.
Michael Schumacher has the most wins of any driver at the track, with six victories. Ferrari and McLaren are the two teams tied for the most wins at Spa with twelve apiece.
Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark, Ayrton Senna, Damon Hill, Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen are the seven drivers who’ve taken back-to-back wins at this track. Clark and Senna have the shared record for most consecutive wins at Spa. Clark took four consecutive victories between 1962 and 1965, while Senna took four in a row between 1988 and 1991.
There are four drivers on the 2018 grid who’ve taken victory at the Belgian Grand Prix before. Kimi Raikkonen has had the most success of the current field with four victories, Lewis Hamilton has won here three times, Sebastian Vettel has won twice, while Daniel Ricciardo took his only Belgian Grand Prix victory so far in 2014.
The longest streak of different winners at this track is eight. In all of the sport’s eight visits to the track between 1965 and 1986, there were no repeat winners.
The smallest win margin at Spa Francorchamps came in 1961, when Phil Hill won by just seven tenths of a second. The largest win margin was all the way back in 1951 when Guiseppe Farina won by 171 seconds.
Six of the last nine races here have been won by less than five seconds. The average win margin from the past ten Belgian Grands Prix is 6.804 seconds.
?? ON THE PODIUM AT SPA
From the fifty races here, seventy different drivers have finished on the podium.
Michael Schumacher has the record for the most podiums at Spa Francorchamps, having finished in the top three on nine occasions.
Seven drivers on this year’s grid have previously appeared on the Belgian Grand Prix podium. Lewis Hamilton has had the most podiums of any current driver at this track, with seven. Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel have each finished on the podium at Spa five times. Daniel Ricciardo and Fernando Alonso have each finished on the rostrum three times, while Romain Grosjean and Valtteri Bottas have each had a single podium finish in Belgium.
?? SPA POLESITTERS
31 different drivers have taken pole position at Spa Francorchamps. Juan Manuel Fangio, Ayton Senna and Lewis Hamilton are all tied for the most poles here, with four apiece. McLaren have the most poles of any team here, with eleven.
Just three drivers on the current grid have previously taken pole at Spa. Aside from Hamilton’s four, Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel have each taken one pole each here.
Ayrton Senna is the driver who has taken the most consecutive poles at the track. He took all four of his Belgian Grand Prix poles consecutively between 1988 and 1991.
The longest streak of different polesitters at Spa Francorchamps came between 2002 and 2012, when there were no repeat polesitters in all nine of the events.
The largest pole margin at the track is 4.9 seconds, which Juan Manuel Fangio achieved in 1956. Meanwhile, the smallest pole margin is a tiny 0.011 seconds which happened in 1983, when Alain Prost took Renault’s first pole at the track.
The average pole margin from the last ten Belgian Grand Prix weekends is 0.251 seconds.
?? SATURDAY TO SUNDAY
Eighteen of the fifty races here have been won from pole, while 31 of the Grands Prix have been won from the front row. That means just nineteen have been won from third or further back.
The furthest back a Belgian Grand Prix at Spa has been won from is sixteenth on the grid, which Michael Schumacher achieved in 1995.
Just one of the past eight races here hasn’t been won from the front row of the grid.
?? SUNDAY STATS
Both of the last two Belgian Grands Prix have featured a Safety Car period. The 2004 race at Spa is the race to have featured the most Safety Car periods at the track. The Safety Car was deployed three times in that Grand Prix.
There have been fifteen rain-affected races at Spa.
The longest race at Spa Francorchamps was in 1952, when Alberto Ascari won in a time of 3:03:46.3. The shortest Grand Prix here came in 2001, when the race lasted for just over 68 minutes. The race was shortened due to Luciano Burti’s accident.
The highest number of finishers at this track came in 2010 when twenty drivers reached the end of the race. The smallest number of finishers was in 1968, when just five drivers made the end of the Grand Prix,
From the past ten races here, an average of seventeen drivers have reached the chequered flag.
Four races at this track have been red-flagged.
?? CHAMPIONSHIP GLORY
Just one driver has been crowned champion at this track. Michael Schumacher took his seventh and final title here in 2004.
The winner of this race has gone on to win the World Championship in the same year nineteen times, including in all of the past three seasons.