Hamilton records his 97th victory, Norris finishes in the top five for a third race in a row and there’s a new most common podium trio in Formula 1 history. Here are the facts and statistics from the 2021 Portuguese Grand Prix!
HAMILTON WINS
Lewis Hamilton recorded his 97th Formula 1 victory at the 2021 Portuguese Grand Prix, extending his championship lead to eight points.
As a result of extending his championship lead, Lewis Hamilton overtakes Michael Schumacher as the driver to have led the championship on the most occasions. The 2021 Portuguese Grand Prix is the 122nd race after which Hamilton has been in the lead of the Drivers’ Championship. Read more: Drivers Who Led the Championship the Most Times.
Lewis Hamilton is only the fourth driver to have taken multiple wins at the Portuguese Grand Prix. The other drivers to have done so are Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Stirling Moss. Hamilton is also the third driver to take back-to-back wins in Portugal. The other drivers to do so are Moss (in 1958 & 1959) and Prost (in 1987 & 1988).
This was the ninth win for a British driver at the Portuguese Grand Prix.
Hamilton’s win came from second on the grid. It’s the 250th time that the driver who started second has won a World Championship Formula 1 race.
ON THE PODIUM
Lewis Hamilton was joined on the podium by Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas. It’s the fifteenth time the trio have finished on the podium together – setting a new record for the most common podium trio in F1 history.
With second place, Max Verstappen recorded his 45th top three finish in Formula 1. It puts him eighteenth in the all time list of most F1 podiums, level with Carlos Reutemann. Rubens Barrichello, David Coulthard, Valtteri Bottas and Gerhard Berger are now the only non-champions with more podium finishes than Verstappen.
Finishing in third place, Valtteri Bottas recorded his 58th podium finish – putting him just two top three finishes away from entering the top ten of most podium finishes in Formula 1 history.
With Bottas leading nineteen laps, the 2021 Portuguese Grand Prix becomes the 200th World Championship F1 race in which a Finnish driver has led a lap.
Valtteri Bottas failed to win having started from pole position. The polesitter is yet to win a race in 2021. 2019 was the last season in which the polesitter failed to win any of the first three Grands Prix of the year.
This was the tenth time in F1 history that the driver starting from second won, the driver starting third finished second and the polesitter finished third. It’s the first time it has happened since the 2015 Monaco Grand Prix.
THE TOP 10
On his way to finishing in fourth place, Sergio Perez led thirteen laps of the Portuguese Grand Prix. This was the third F1 race which Perez has led, after the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix and the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix.
This was the first time since the 2020 Russian Grand Prix that Perez finished in the same position as where he started.
With fifth place, Lando Norris records a top five finish for a fourth consecutive race. It’s the first time in his F1 career that Norris has finished in the top five at four consecutive events.
Charles Leclerc finished in the top six for a third consecutive race. Hamilton, Verstappen, Norris and Leclerc have finished in the top six at every race so far in 2021.
Finishing in eighth place, Fernando Alonso recorded his best result since his seventh place finish with McLaren at the 2018 Singapore Grand Prix.
Though he started only sixteenth, Daniel Ricciardo scored two points with a ninth place finish. The 2021 Portuguese Grand Prix is the fourteenth consecutive race in which Ricciardo has scored. It’s the Australian’s longest points-scoring streak since finishing in the top ten at all of the last seventeen races of the 2016 season.
Ricciardo gained seven positions in the Portuguese Grand Prix. It’s the most positions he’s gained in a race since also gaining seven spots at the 2018 Brazilian Grand Prix.
Ricciardo is the first driver to score having started sixteenth on the grid since Romain Grosjean at the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix. Grosjean also finished ninth in that race.
Along with Hamilton, Ricciardo was the only other driver to record the same result in the 2021 Portuguese Grand Prix as he did in the 2020 event.
THE OTHER FINISHERS
For the first time since his retirement at the 2020 Russian Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz finished outside of the points. The Ferrari driver finished the race in eleventh place.
For the first time in 2021, neither Aston Martin driver scored at the 2021 Portuguese Grand Prix. It’s the first time that the Silverstone-based team has failed to score since both cars retired from the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix.
Yuki Tsunoda finished fifteenth in the Portuguese Grand Prix. It’s the first time in his Formula 1 career that Tsunoda has finished a race in a worse position than where he started. Mick Schumacher is now the only driver on the current grid to have never lost a position in any Grand Prix he has started.
THE ONLY RETIREE
After colliding with his team-mate, Kimi Raikkonen recorded his first retirement since last year’s season-opening Austrian Grand Prix.
Raikkonen’s retirement resulted in the Safety Car being deployed. It was the first time a Safety Car had been deployed in a Portuguese Grand Prix.
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