Silverstoneprovided such a great race and with the sell-out crowd, Hamilton
winning it was historic and also special. Kimi’s back-to-back victories
in France and Silverstone last year were well over due, but this year
it’s becoming ever more harder to win again. They say in Italy that the
number 17 is unlucky, and Kimi has lost two great opportunities to win
his 17th GP at France and Silverstone. But, his career is growing
rapidly and he has achieved a number of more records and notes worthy
to mention from the 2008 British GP. Although stats and figures aren’t
of much interest to Kimi himself, let’s take a look at stats and facts
Silverstone brought us yesterday, courtesy of Autosport.com’s Michele
Merlino, and of course the extra Kimi information added by me.
Hamilton’s dominant win
Lewis Hamilton won his seventh race in Silverstone, the first for him starting from the second row of the grid.
Hamilton won by a
margin of 1:08.577 over Nick Heidfeld, and this is the largest margin
since Damon Hill led a depleted field by two laps in the 1995
Australian Grand Prix. In that race several front-runners retired due
to collisions or mechanical failures, and Hill won ahead of Olivier
Panis.
To find another race
where the two leading drivers were on the same lap and the gap was
bigger, we have to move back another year, at the 1994 Pacific Grand
Prix, where Michael Schumacher won by 1:15.300 over Gerhard Berger.
Honda and Barrichello back on the podium
Honda scored with
Rubens Barrichello their ninth podium in history, the fourth since
their return to racing in 2006. The last time Honda were on the podium
was in the 2006 Brazilian Grand Prix with Jenson Button, and last time
Barrichello climbed on the podium before this year’s British Grand Prix
was in the 2005 US Grand Prix when he took second behind then-teammate
Schumacher in a Ferrari.
Barrichello scored
his 62nd podium and thus ties with David Coulthard at the fourth
all-time spot behind Schumacher (154), Alain Prost (106) and Ayrton
Senna (80).
Joint leads
Following the
British GP, there is a three-way tie at the top of the points standing.
This also happened last year after Bahrain, when Fernando Alonso, Kimi
Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton had 22 points each.
It’s only the third
time this happens in 59 seasons: the third time occurred in the first
year, 1950, when after Indianapolis Nino Farina, Juan Manuel Fangio and
Johnnie Parsons all had 9 points after three races.
(The significant
difference of this championship tie is that both Lewis and Felipe have
won 3 races opposed to Kimi’s only two victories at Malaysia and Spain.)
Qualifying notes
• First pole for
Heikki Kovalainen, the 91st driver in history to start from pole
position. It’s also the third straight year that a McLaren car started
on pole at Silverstone.
• Mark Webber
equalled his best career qualifying result, a second place he gained
four times: Malaysia 2004, Spain 2005 and Monaco 2006 being the other
occurrences.
(Kimi managed to out
qualify teammate Massa for the third consecutive time from Canada.
However on all three occassions Kimi has failed to win in the races.)
Race notes
• Nick Heidfeld equals for the sixth time his best career result, a second place.
• Sixth straight
fastest lap for Kimi Raikkonen, his third consecutive fastest lap in
Silverstone since 2005. And with a fourth-place finish, the Finn is the
seventh driver to score more than 500 points in career. He overtook
Alonso in this ranking, now the couple is only one point apart, with
Raikkonen at 504 and Fernando at 503.
• Raikkonen was not
on the podium at Silverstone for the first time after five years. (2004
– 2nd, 2005 – 3rd, 2006 – 3rd, 2007 – 1st)
• The last time both Ferraris finished the race a lap down (or more) was in the 1996 Brazilian Grand Prix.
• For the
first time in his career, Felipe Massa ended the race lapped twice by
the leader. It’s also the first time he was classified last.
Kimi, as mentioned,
set the fastest lap at Silverstone with a time of 1.32.150. The
sequence of fastest laps by Kimi Raikkonen keeps growing and now the
Finn, reaching six fastest laps in a row this season, is ahead of the
all-time 3rd place of Michael Schumacher:
Most consecutive fastest laps
Alberto Ascari – 7 (Belgium ’52 – Argentina ’53)
Kimi Raikkonen – 6 (Spain – Britain ’08)
Michael Schumacher – 5 (Bahrain – Europe ’04)
All time most fastest laps
Schumacher – 76
Prost – 41
Raikkonen – 31
Mansell – 30
If you’re interested in looking at the full statistics of Kimi’s career, you can read them all in the KRS Archive here. As
the top 3 in the championship are level in points, no one has a clear
advantage but it’s time now to start attacking. Ferrari will soon have
to decide who to push for the charge for the championship. So…now we
head to Germany for round 10 of the season. Kimi has never won at
Hockenheim, though he came pretty close to winning at the Nurburgring
in 2005, one lap away to be precise. But we all know how that
dramatically ended! He has taken two pole positions and fastest laps in
Hockenheim however. Being a fast, with high speed straights, circuit,
Kimi should be able to benefit from his Ferrari properly this time.
Let’s hope that together, he and the team can overcome their bad races
and get back to winning. Below is a post-race interview with Kimi I’ve
just uploaded, seeing as we didn’t get any from him straight away
yesterday:
FUCK ISRAEL 