~ 2013 German Grand Prix stats and facts: Vettel closes on clean sweep after first home win~ Sebastian Vettel, who turned 26 last week, has achieved an awful lot in his F1 career to date. Before his latest triumph he was already a three-times world champion with the third-highest number of pole positions and the sixth-largest haul of victories. But there was one especially prized accomplishment left for him to claim: a victory in his home race. On Sunday he finally achieved it, scoring his 30th grand prix victory on home ground at the Nurburgring. Of Germany’s two F1 tracks, the Nurburgring is the farthest from Vettel’s home town of Heppenheim which lies 200km to the south-east. He only gets to compete at the Hockenheimring, 40km south of Heppenheim, every other year. There are 43 other drivers who have scored victories on home ground including Fernando Alonso (three including one European Grand Prix), Felipe Massa (two) and Lewis Hamilton (one). As there are no Hungarian, Belgian, Italian, Singaporean, South Korean, Japanese, Indian, Emirati or American drivers in F1, there won’t be another chance of a home winner until Massa arrives at Interlagos for the last race of the season. Vettel has now won every Grand Prix on the calendar at least once with the exception of the next round, the Hungarian Grand Prix, and the United States Grand Prix which he has only started twice. It took Vettel 110 starts to rack up 30 wins. Only Michael Schumacher got there more quickly – it took him 109 starts. Ayrton Senna took 114, Alain Prost 124, Nigel Mansell 179 and Alonso 186. In the all-time winners list, Vettel needs one more to catch Mansell and is two behind Alonso. Vettel also matched Hamilton’s podiums tally of 52. Three different drivers have been on pole so far this year – Vettel, Rosberg and Hamilton – and each have done so three times. Later on in the race Grosjean was instructed to let team mate Kimi Raikkonen past so the other Lotus could chase down Vettel. They finished in that order, thereby replicating the events and outcome of last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix. Vettel has now led more than twice as many laps as any other driver this year with 230. Nico Rosberg is next with 104.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 19:10:08 +0000
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