Strong Red Bull Racing and qualifying king Leclerc looking for records?
- GPblog.com
After seven F1 races in 2022, it appears that Charles Leclerc of Ferrari is the strongest in qualifying. Red Bull Racing seems to do better during the races on both strength and strategy with four wins in a row. How do the 2022 statistics compare to historical records?
Seven times on first starting row for Leclerc
The Ferrari F1-75 is a particularly fast car over one lap. Leclerc tames the Ferrari every Saturday again in 2022 and managed to start from the front row of the grid every time from the first race in Bahrain to the last race in Monaco. The Monegasque is therefore fighting with Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez for the 2022 title. With his run of seven races from start row one, he has broken his own record of six races. He set that streak in 2019; started in Belgium and finished in Mexico that year.
It earns the Ferrari driver a shared twelfth place in that list. Several drivers preceded him and some drivers achieved such series more often. Of the current drivers on the grid, only Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel have managed to sustain a longer run. Hamilton placed himself on the front row of the grid no less than twenty times in a row from Belgium 2014 to Italy 2015. Vettel did so fourteen times from Singapore 2010 to England 2011.
Valtteri Bottas had as long a run as Leclerc in 2020. The driver with the longest run of "starts from the front row" is Ayrton Senna. The Brazilian qualified on the front row 24 times in a row; from Germany 1988 to Australia 1989. If Leclerc qualifies on P1 or P2 again during the Baku GP he will be on par with Michael Schumacher on the list.
Four wins in a row for Red Bull
Another statistic of 2022 is Red Bull Racing's victory series. The team is currently on a streak of four wins in a row. In the championship years, they did achieve this series more often. The last time was in 2012. Last year, the team also managed to achieve a five-race victory series. The team won all races from Monaco to Austria. The team's 'personal' record is nine wins in a row. That series dates back to 2013 and was set from the Belgian Grand Prix to the Brazilian Grand Prix.
The record holder for most wins in a row is currently McLaren. The team achieved a victory streak of no less than eleven in 1988. Ferrari achieved a series of ten victories in 2002. And in Mercedes' dominant years, they achieved a ten-race win streak no less than three times. With a victory in Baku for Red Bull, the team equals last year's series. Only in Hungary can their own record possibly be broken. Only if Red Bull wins everything up to and including Hungary they will be on a ten-race winning streak.