Six points ahead in the drivers’ standings, when some statistical items they would suggest many more. The gap in the ranking between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton is minimal, yet the Red Bull driver in this 2021 has reached the top of the race in the beauty of 469, more than half of all those of his colleagues added together. The seven-time world champion stops at 133, enough to have in any case won five victories against the seven claims of the 1997 class, including the ‘victory’ of Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. Below is the ranking of the laps covered in the lead so far in the sixteen races that have gone into the archive.
Max Verstappen 469
Lewis Hamilton 133
Valtteri Bottas 76
Esteban Ocon 65
Charles Leclerc 60
Daniel Ricciardo 48
Sergio Perez 34
Lando Norris 31
Carlos Sainz 12
Sebastian Vettel 4
Fernando Alonso 2
The fourth position of Esteban Ocon stands out, thanks to the exploit in Hungary where he led the race practically from start to finish thanks to the strategic error of Mercedes that sent Hamilton to the grid on the occasion of the restart with intermediate tires. Bad lucky Charles Leclerc, who covered 60 laps in the lead without obtaining a success, a haul of laps that has the largest ‘contributor’ in the British Grand Prix. In total, eleven drivers have led the group for at least one lap, more than half of the starting grid. Returning to Verstappen, analyzing why such a high number of laps in the lead translated into ‘only’ seven wins, we highlight the knockout in the final in Baku when the victory seemed written and the mockery of Barcelona, where Lewis Hamilton was right of Red Bull driver only in the final race. By transforming laps into kilometers, the proportion between Verstappen and Hamilton leads the way, with the former ‘tripling’ the total of the latter.
Max Verstappen 2100 km
Lewis Hamilton 706
Valtteri Bottas 384
Charles Leclerc 348
Esteban Ocon 285
Daniel Ricciardo 278