In Monaco, Lewis Hamilton was amused to share the podium with two drivers, Kimi Antonelli and Isack Hadjar, whose combined age was lower than his own. A week later, he can boast of being on the list of the oldest winners in Formula 1 history – while still remaining on that of the youngest.
To grasp the scale of the British driver’s performance, it is best to go back to his first season. On 10 June 2007, at the Canadian GP, Hamilton aged 22 years and 154 days became the fourth-youngest winner in F1 history.
He has since dropped to eighth place in this ranking (Max Verstappen, Kimi Antonelli, Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc have beaten him in that statistic) but he now has the distinction of also being in the top seven oldest winners.
By winning at 41 years and 158 days on Sunday, Hamilton became the seventh-oldest driver in the winners’ circle, and only the 10th to have done so after his 40th birthday.
Luigi Fagioli, winner of the 1951 French GP at 53 years and 22 days, remains the only driver in his fifties to have won in F1. But it was a different era and among those ahead of Hamilton in this ranking, the majority are drivers who raced in the 1950s, with the exception of Jack Brabham, winner of his last grand prix at nearly 44 in 1970.
Hamilton is the oldest driver to win since Brabham’s 1970 South African Grand Prix triumph and there has only been one race with a driver in his forties on the top step of the podium: Adelaide 1994, where Nigel Mansell won at 41 years and 97 days.
Unprecedented longevity
Photo by: Darren Heath – Getty Images
A total of 19 years and four days elapsed between Hamilton’s first victory and the one in Barcelona. That is by far a record, ahead of the 15 years and 212 days separating Kimi Raikkonen’s first and last wins (Sepang 2003 and Austin 2018) and the 14 years and 32 days between Michael Schumacher’s first and last success (Spa 1992 and Shanghai 2006).
Hamilton also improves his record for wins in different seasons, taking it to 17. He is ahead of Schumacher (15) and Alain Prost (11) in this ranking.
Since the event has officially taken the name “Barcelona-Catalunya GP”, this is the 32nd different grand prix won by Hamilton, which is another record, ahead of Verstappen’s 30, but Hamilton stretched his stats by winning several events with new names in 2020: Styrian GP (Red Bull Ring), Tuscan GP (Mugello), Eifel GP (Nurburgring) and Emilia-Romagna GP (Imola).
A first win in red in Barcelona, like Schumacher
Michael Schumacher, the other seven-time F1 world champion, also won his first race for the Scuderia in Barcelona, exactly 30 years ago.
As an extra wink from history, Schumacher’s victory at the 1996 Spanish GP was then Ferrari’s 106th. The one secured by Hamilton is the 249th for Ferrari – but his 106th personally.
The first all-British podium in 58 years
In addition to being a significant moment for Hamilton and Ferrari, the Barcelona race will also stand out in the history book for the United Kingdom. Thanks to second place for George Russell and third place for Lando Norris, the country swept the podium, for the 12th time in its history and the first time since Watkins Glen in 1968, with Jackie Stewart, Graham Hill and John Surtees.
Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images
It is only the 32nd time in history that one country has locked out the podium, and the statistic is skewed by the presence of the Indianapolis 500 on the calendar in the 1950s. The United States thus achieved a clean sweep 11 times, each time at Indianapolis.
The only other countries to have placed three drivers on the podium are Italy (six times) and France (three times). The last podium entirely dominated by one nation before this Sunday was an all-French rostrum, made up of Patrick Tambay, Alain Prost and Rene Arnoux at the 1983 San Marino GP.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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