Having finished third in last weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, when Fernando Alonso lines up for the next Formula 1 race he will have gone a decade without winning a grand prix.
Alonso was racing for Ferrari when he scored the 32nd win of his career in the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix. Nine of the 20 drivers on this year’s grid, including Alonso’s team mate Lance Stroll and championship leader Max Verstappen, were still in go-karts then.
If Alonso does win another race, he will break the record for the longest wait between consecutive grand prix wins. That is held by Riccardo Patrese, who had to wait six years and 210 days between his victories in the 1983 South African Grand Prix for Brabham and the 1990 San Marino Grand Prix for Williams. That spanned 99 races – in contrast Alonso has started 162 during that time, and missed 38 over 2019 and 2020.
The intervening period has featured few missed opportunities for Alonso to win again. He did not qualify in the top four for an F1 race until the final round of the season, and had to wait until last year’s Canadian Grand Prix to line up on the front row again. Only once during that time has a team mate of his taken a victory – Esteban Ocon’s breakthrough triumph at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix.
Alonso arrived at his current team via McLaren – including an interminable three years in the slow and unreliable Honda-powered cars – and Alpine, plus two years out of F1 racing in the World Endurance Championship, IndyCar and Dakar rally. However his move to Aston Martin this year has proved an inspired choice – in five races he’s finished on the podium four times, taking his total top-three finishes since his last victory to a total of 13.
Teams: Ferrari (red), McLaren (orange), Alpine (blue), Aston Martin (green)
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Alonso returned to the front row in Jeddah earlier this year and in Miami he started from second place once again. That was the 40th time in his career he has qualified in the top two, and on Sunday he finished third for the 33rd time since debuting in F1. That puts him level with the retired Sebastian Vettel, and now only Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton have appeared on the podium’s bottom spot more times than Alonso.
That also helped Aston Martin reach the 100-point mark for the first time in a season, after just five races, with their trophy cabinet now consisting of five items. On the same number of F1 trophies is Porsche and Stewart – the latter team being that which eventually turned into reigning champions Red Bull.
Since adopting Red Bull’s colours, the Milton Keynes-based team has won 97 grands prix, 26 of which were one-twos. Verstappen picked up the 38th win of his career, and has tied Sebastian Vettel’s record for most wins scored at Red Bull.
Verstappen finished in the points for the 24th race in a row, meaning he has now matched the longest points-scoring run that Michael Schumacher achieved in his illustrious career. Only Hamilton and Raikkonen have had longer scoring streaks that this.
In the 61st F1 race Verstappen has led, his overtake for the lead on team mate Sergio Perez proved perfectly timed, as he finished the race with a career tally of 2,000 laps led. Having risen from ninth on the grid, this was 21st time Verstappen has won without starting from pole position.
Only five races in F1 history have been won from ninth on the grid. Until last Sunday the most recent was Niki Lauda’s victory for McLaren in the 1984 French Grand Prix at Dijon. The others were the 1977 Canadian Grand Prix (Jody Scheckter), 1967 Italian Grand Prix (John Surtees) and 1955 Monaco Grand Prix (Maurice Trintignant).
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En route to victory Verstappen also set the fastest lap, This was the 23rd of his career, giving him as many as fellow world champions Juan Manuel Fangio, Nelson Piquet and Alonso.
Despite taking the third pole position of his career, Perez seemed powerless to stop Verstappen beating him to victory. But he did pick up his 30th podium by finishing second. It was also the 12th time has been runner-up in a grand prix.
Joining Perez as one of the stars of Saturday in Miami was Kevin Magnussen, who qualified fourth for Haas. Although he was fastest in qualifying for the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix, the sprint race format used that weekend meant he did not start from pole for Sunday’s race, and so last weekend actually marked the first time one of Haas’s cars has started on the front two rows of a grand prix. Magnussen equalled his highest starting position in a grand prix, which he previously achieved on his debut for McLaren in the 2014 Australian Grand Prix, and again later that year in Germany.
In stark contract to Haas’s qualifying heroics in Miami was McLaren, who failed to get either of their cars through Q1. The last time that happened was the 2018 Brazilian Grand Prix.
However the team does remain fifth in the constructors’ standings, albeit having only scored 14 points across the first five rounds. The last time the team occupying that position this far into the season had as few points was in 2009, when a different points system was used that awarded 10 points for victory instead of 25. In that year, Renault occupied fifth in the standings on nine points after five races, while McLaren were fourth on 13.
The Miami Grand Prix is the first of three F1 races this year in the United States, and the 74th time in history the world championship has visited in the country. It’s the third time F1 has raced in the state of Florida following last year’s Miami GP and the USA’s first world championship race at Sebring in 1959.
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America has held three F1 races in a single year before – the series visited Long Beach, Detroit and the original Las Vegas circuit in 1982. Italy has also held a trio of races in the Covid-disrupted season of 2020, when Monza, Imola and Mugello all hosted rounds.
Other statistical landmarks reached last weekend include Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc surpassing 900 points in his F1 career and Bottas making his 167th consecutive race start. That puts the Alfa Romeo driver joint ninth in the all-time table with Rubens Barrichello, while Verstappen’s 168th consecutive grand prix appearance moves him up to eighth.
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2023 Miami Grand Prix
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