The 2014 Formula 1 season saw a host of both positive and unenviable records added to the sport’s history books, as Mercedes surged to title glory and others struggled. GPUpdate.net presents a selection.
After the final chequered flag fell in Abu Dhabi, Lewis Hamilton edged out Nico Rosberg in terms of laps led, with the World Champion fronting the field for 495 laps, compared to Rosberg’s 483.
On six occasions a Mercedes driver led from start to finish: Rosberg achieved the feat in Australia, Monaco and Germany while Hamilton was never headed in Malaysia, China and Russia.
After the Mercedes racers was Daniel Ricciardo, the three-time victor having led for 72 laps. Fernando Alonso led 32, Felipe Massa 30, Sergio Pérez 11, Nico Hulkenerg five and Valtteri Bottas four. Jenson Button and outgoing World Champion Sebastian Vettel led just a solitary lap.
McLaren headed the reliability stakes in 2014, with Button completing the most racing laps – 1120 out of 1134 across 19 races. Team-mate Kevin Magnussen was next up, having amassed 1111 laps in his rookie campaign, with Bottas third on 1110. The Mercedes drivers were only seventh and eighth after their reliability woes.
Out of the drivers to enter every race it was Pastor Maldonado who completed the fewest laps – 847 – with André Lotterer rounding out the field having raced just one lap during his lone outing in Belgium.
Vettel was the only driver to complete one racing lap in all of the 22 positions in the field.
In terms of action the smallest margin between the victor and the runner-up was in Spain, when Hamilton fended off Rosberg by 0.636s. Conversely, the largest gap came in Britain when Hamilton finished 30.135 seconds ahead of distant rival Bottas.
Mercedes dominated the 2014 season as the German squad won 16 of the 19 races to eclipse McLaren’s record of 15 from 1988 – albeit the latter achieved the feat in a year with only 16 races and therefore have a better record in terms of percentages.
Mercedes’s dominance meant that 2014 equalled 1950, 1952, 1963 and 1988 with the fewest different victors in a season, with only Hamilton, Rosberg and Ricciardo crossing the finish line in first position.
Mercedes also matched Red Bull’s record from 2011 of 18 pole positions from 19 races and equalled Cosworth’s feat from 1969 of one engine manufacturer taking every pole position in a solitary campaign – Felipe Massa’s Mercedes-powered Williams set the quickest time in Austria.
And the Silver Arrows set a new record for number of 1-2 finishes in a season, with Hamilton and Rosberg locking out the top positions on 11 occasions. Mercedes also amassed 701 points, a new record in Formula 1.
In gaining his second title six years after his first success, Hamilton narrowly eclipsed Graham Hill’s record of longest waits between his first two championships.
The Briton also became only the third driver – after Michael Schumacher and Vettel – to win over 10 races in a single year and was the first driver since Schumacher to win titles for different teams, having achieved his first success with McLaren.
Hamilton set another record akin to Schumacher’s by reaching the podium in every race he finished. However, Schumacher finished all 17 races of the 2002 season while Hamilton was unable to see the chequered flag on three occasions in 2014.
In winning the title Hamilton, who also took the fastest lap trophy, ensured that the Formula 1 crown stayed with European drivers for a 17th successive season – with only four nations (Germany, United Kingdom, Finland, Spain) having provided the World Champions.
Rosberg claimed the pole position trophy, having been the quickest driver on a Saturday 11 times – in doing so becoming the first team-mate of Hamilton to trump him in qualifying. Only Ayrton Senna, in 1989, took more pole positions in a single campaign (13) without winning the title in the same season.
Vettel set an unenviable record as he became the first champion since Jacques Villeneuve in 1998 to not win a race while defending a title. Other champions endured sub-par campaigns as Ferrari failed to win a race for the first time since 1993 and, with McLaren enduring a second straight year without a sniff of victory, it meant that neither Ferrari nor McLaren triumphed for the first time since 1980.
Ferrari’s wait for a win has now stretched to 33 races – its longest barren spell for two decades – with McLaren having endured a similar lean period as Mercedes and Red Bull have won every Grand Prix since Alonso’s triumph in Spain last year.
Ferrari achieved just two podium finishes – its worst record since 1992 – while Kimi Räikkönen achieved the lowest championship position for a full-time Ferrari driver since Didier Pironi in 1981. To make matters worse for Räikkönen, it was his first year in Formula 1 without a win since 2006 and the first time since his Sauber days when he failed to even appear in the top three.
Conversely, third-placed Williams achieved its best position in the Constructors’ Championship since 2003 – when it was second – and notched up more podium finishes in 2014 than it did in the previous nine years combined.
Force India matched its best championship result with sixth and scored a record haul of points, claiming its first podium in five years with Pérez in Bahrain, while it was a difficult campaign for Lotus as the team could manage only eighth, its lowest placing since its Renault days of 2009.
Lotus’ mid-season spell outside the top 10 was ‘Team Enstone’s’ longest streak since its nascent Toleman period in 1985. Pastor Maldonado also racked up the most penalties (10) for the third time in his Formula 1 career.
At the tail-end Sauber endured its worst ever season in Formula 1 as it failed to score a point, while Adrian Sutil set an unenviable personal record as he has now started 128 races without a podium.
Marussia scored points at the 83rd time of asking in Monaco, meaning that the record for the team which has started the most races without a point (now 94) went to Caterham, which began life as Lotus Racing in 2010.
However, one driver at the back of the grid did set a positive record as Max Chilton finished the first 25 races of his Formula 1 career – he only retired at the 26th time of asking.
