The next Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the penultimate round of the season, will allow Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen to get even more into the fight for the title, with the two drivers separated by only 8 points. At the moment, the Dutch driver of Red Bull is leading the standings, who boasts a role that only one other driver before him, in the history of turbo-hybrid Formula 1, had managed to occupy: Mad Max, regardless of how the world championship ends, he is in fact the second rider to have undermined the British world domination, from 2014 onwards, after Nico Rosberg. The latter, in 2016, he had also managed to win the title, then retiring from F1 at the end of that season.
For its part, Hamilton in the meantime can console himself with the victory achieved in Qatar, the same that allowed him to strengthen an already his record: thanks to the success of Losail, in fact, the Mercedes standard bearer won in 30 different circuits, adding to his personal palmarès the seals he won on his debut last year in Portimao and Mugello. Among other things, his specialty of obtaining first places at his debut on a new track could be further enriched also in the next stage in Jeddah, where F1 has never raced before.
Returning instead to his main rival, Verstappen, the 24-year-old represents the 47th pilot in history of Formula 1 to have the arithmetic possibility of being able to win the world title. The last to have found himself in this situation without then being able to become champion was another Red Bull driver, Mark Webber, in the 2010. The Australian entered the last race in the conditions of winning the world championship together with Fernando Alonso and his teammate Sebastian Vettel, with the latter opening a series of four consecutive world championships.
Moreover, always at a statistical level, the last one Qatar GP scored a double record just for Fernando Alonso: thanks to the third place obtained, the Spaniard broke a long period of fasting from the podium that lasted as many as 146 races (equivalent, also calculating his temporary retirement, at 7 years and 3 months), establishing the new record of most waiting between a podium and the other, in addition to the highest number of GPs spent, 155, between the first and last placement in the top 3 throughout his career. Finally, there is a curious fact inherent in Pierre Gasly: thanks to the penalties of Verstappen and Bottas, the French driver had the opportunity to shoot for the first time in his career from the front row, something that hadn’t happened to a transalpine since 2012 with Romain Grosjean. In this way, Gasly has ‘detached’ himself from the list of drivers capable of winning a GP despite never having started from the first two places on the starting grid.
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