Post-Race Statistics of the 2014 Spanish GP

First race in Europe is over and guess what? Mercedes won the race, first time for everything I guess.

However one part of the Mercedes dominance did end at the Spanish GP, for the first time this season it wasn’t a Mercedes that took the fastest lap of the race, instead Sebastian Vettel took it by three tenths of a second. Lewis Hamilton won his fourth race in a row, fifth in a row for Mercedes. It is the first ever time that Mercedes have won five races in a row in F1, however in the pre-war European Championship they won seven races in a row.

Nico Rosberg took second place yet again and Daniel Ricciardo finished on the F1 podium for the first time, again, except this time he didn’t get disqualified. Lotus scored their first points of the season with Grosjean’s eighth place, still no luck for Maldonado though. In the five races so far Maldonado has failed to set a time in Q1 in three of them and is currently in 20^th place in the championship, behind Max Chilton and Kamui Kobayashi.

Vettel had a poor start to the weekend, with his gearbox failing in Q3, qualifying 10^th and then getting the inevitable five place penalty for a gearbox change, dropping him down to 15^th. However Vettel recovered with an excellent drive to get back to fourth place.

Lewis Hamilton has finally taken the championship lead from Rosberg, but it was a close finish and could easily have gone in Rosberg’s favour. Hulkenberg has dropped down two positions to sixth, putting Vettel up to fourth and Ricciardo to fifth. Grosjean’s first points have put him further up in the table, demoting both Toro Rosso drivers, who have somehow stayed just one position apart for the season so far.

Still a MASSIVE GAP between the Mercedes cars and everyone else, almost double the points of Alonso in third. The gap from first to third is bigger than the gap from third to last, if you ignore the two Mercedes it’s all very close and competitive.