F1 2009: The year in stats (Part 2)

In a year of remarkable reliability Heidfeld set a new record for finishing races

The final part of our look at the 2009 F1 season in numbers will shed some more light on which were the best-performing drivers, and looks at how 2009 compared to other F1 seasons.

Plus there’s a recap of all the major records broken in 2009 – from the youngest ever F1 driver to the first-time champions.

Season records

Races	17
Different winners	6 (Jenson Button, Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber, Rubens Barrichello, Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen)
Most wins by individual	6 (Jenson Button)
Different pole holders	8 (Jenson Button, Rubens Barrichello, Mark Webber, Sebastian Vettel, Jarno Trulli, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Giancarlo Fisichella)
Most poles by individual	4 (Jenson Button, Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton)
Different drivers	25
Drivers who competed in all races	16
Drivers who did just one race	0
Drivers who scored points	19
Races in dry conditions	15
Races in mixed conditions	1
Races in wet conditions	1
Most places gained by driver in one race	16 (Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock, Australian Grand Prix)

Drivers ranked by results

Jenson Button won the world championship and he also scored more wins than anyone else. But what happens if we rank the entire grid in order of who got the best results? The table below shows the rankings.

Mark Webber moves up a pace to third at Rubens Barrichello’s expense. Fisichella moves up from 15th to 11th thanks to his second place at Spa.

Rosberg suffers the most, falling from seventh to 14th, having failed to land a big score when the opportunity presented itself at races such as Singapore. But curiously the gulf in performance between him and team mate Kazuki Nakajima is even more apparent: we can see Rosberg beat Nakajima’s best finishing position on no fewer than 13 occasions. The same goes for Alonso compared to his two team mates.

Have a look at the 2009 F1 championship standings to make comparisons of your own:

	Driver	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16
1.	Jenson Button	6	1	2	0	3	1	2	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2.	Sebastian Vettel	4	2	2	3	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	1	0
3.	Mark Webber	2	4	2	0	1	1	0	0	2	0	1	1	0	0	0	0
4.	Rubens Barrichello	2	3	1	2	2	2	2	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
5.	Lewis Hamilton	2	1	2	1	0	1	1	0	1	0	0	2	1	0	0	1
6.	Kimi Raikkonen	1	1	3	1	0	2	0	1	1	2	0	1	0	1	1	0
7.	Jarno Trulli	0	1	2	2	0	0	2	1	0	0	0	1	2	1	0	0
8.	Timo Glock	0	1	1	1	0	1	2	1	2	3	1	0	0	1	0	0
9.	Robert Kubica	0	1	0	1	0	0	1	2	1	1	1	0	3	2	0	0
10.	Nick Heidfeld	0	1	0	0	2	1	2	0	0	2	4	1	0	0	1	0
11.	Giancarlo Fisichella	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	2	2	2	1	3	1	1
12.	Felipe Massa	0	0	1	2	0	2	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
13.	Fernando Alonso	0	0	1	0	3	1	2	1	1	2	1	0	0	2	0	0
14.	Nico Rosberg	0	0	0	2	4	2	0	3	2	0	1	0	0	0	1	1
15.	Heikki Kovalainen	0	0	0	1	2	2	1	1	0	0	2	2	0	1	0	0
16.	Adrian Sutil	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	1	1	0	1	1	1	1
17.	Kamui Kobayashi	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
18.	Sebastien Buemi	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	2	0	0	0	1	1	0	1	3
19.	Sebastien Bourdais	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	1	1	0	1	0	0	0
20.	Kazuki Nakajima	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	1	1	3	3	0	2	0
21.	Nelson Piquet Jnr	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	3	2	0	0	2
22.	Vitantonio Liuzzi	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	2	1	0
23.	Romain Grosjean	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	2	1
24.	Jaime Alguersuari	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	1
25.	Luca Badoer	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0

2009 season in context

For the third year in a row we saw a new record for race completion. Out of every start made by every driver, 82.06% resulted in a classified finished. In a decade F1 has gone from only having half the field finish each race to more than four out of five cars finishing.

Reliability stayed close to its record level of last year, with just 9.12% of race starts ending due to a car failure.

Last year’s record for every driver starting every race was not matched due to two sackings (Sebastien Bourdais and Nelson Piquet Jnr) and two injuries (Felipe Massa and Timo Glock).

F1 2009: Pole positions (click to enlarge)

Pole positions were shared among eight drivers in 2009. That was partly because the field was generally quite evenly matched, with some teams that were not regular contenders for victory enjoying strong form at particular venues – such as Force India at Spa and McLaren at anything slow and twisty.

It was also partly because of the artificial nature of race-fuel qualifying, allowing drivers to cut their fuel load to qualify well (Toyota at Bahrian, Alonso at Spa). This will be gone next year.

F1 2009: Different winners (click to enlarge)

Strange that Button won as many races as the two champions before him, yet there are so many discussions about him being an ‘unworthy’ champion.

2009 stats and facts highlights

Jenson Button’s first world championship
Brawn’s first world championship
Brawn are the first team to win their maiden Grand Prix since Wolf in 1977
Mark Webber and Red Bull’s first F1 wins
Red Bull’s first pole position
Force India’s first pole position
Force India’s first F1 points and podium
The Malaysian Grand Prix was the third shortest ever F1 race by time at 55 minutes, 30.6 seconds. It was the first time half points had been awarded since the 1991 Australian Grand Prix.
Jaime Alguersuari became the youngest driver to start an F1 race
Nick Heidfeld’s record streak of race completion ends after 41 consecutive classified results and 33 races finished in a row
Sebastien Buemi became the 69th driver to score a point on their debut
Ferrari failed to score in the first three races for the first time since 1981
McLaren failed to score a point in four consecutive races for the first time since 1981
Button became the first driver to win four consecutive races since Fernando Alonso in 2006
Britain became the first country to score 200 wins in F1 and Brazil became the third country to reach 100 wins
For the second year in a row the world championship was won by a British driver in car number 22 with a Mercedes engine, by finishing fifth in the Brazilian Grand Prix, beating a Brazilian driver to the title

Race facts and stats

If a double-post on F1 stats still isn’t enough, here’s all the post-race stats analysis from every race this year:

18 comments on “F1 2009: The year in stats (Part 2)”

Myles
16th November 2009, 7:31

Keith, this looks great. Just one thing I noticed is that Lewis Hamilton, I believe, also had 4 Pole positions (Europe, Italy, Singapore, Abu Dhabi).

Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
16th November 2009, 10:01

Indeed he did – added.
1. sato113
  16th November 2009, 11:44
  
  and also Keith, ‘Alonso at Spa‘ should be Alonso in Hungary.

Ben
16th November 2009, 8:51

Every time I see a picture of the BMW I swear when they were making the front assembly they had the nosecone upside down when they attached the wing.

Strange that Button won as many races as the two champions before him, yet there are so many discussions about him being an ‘unworthy’ champion.

Imagine the conniptions they would have if a Mike Hawthorn scenario happened.

Antifia
17th November 2009, 16:06

The problem with Button is that one cannot help but think that his performance was a bit mediocre for a WC. He won his races when Brawn was clearly ahead of the pack. When the other teams caught up with them – dobble deck defuser for everybody – he became a also run. Sometimes, Brawn GP would still be the team to beat, but in the last 10 races, the performance of the WC was lackluster at best – his qualis were downright awful. What saved him was the competition being even more awkward. In sum, it was a championship in which the least incompetent won….He deserves the title (he score most points) but he is a forgetable WC in a historical sense.

spawinte
16th November 2009, 9:12

Add Red Bulls first win to the list.

Larry Simms
16th November 2009, 11:05

Sorry to be thick about this, but would you kindly explain what the “Drivers ranked by results” table is measuring, and how it does so?

Ned Flanders
16th November 2009, 11:30

Yeah I couldn’t make sense of that either.
Also, a couple of small mistakes I spotted:

In the last paragraphy, it says Button won as many races as the previous two champs. In fact, he won more than Hamilton (unless you count Spa 2008 which he was the rightful winner of)

In the paragraph after Drivers 92-09, it says that everey driver in 2008 competed in every race- but Sato and Davidson only started the first 4
1. Ben
  16th November 2009, 12:00
  
  1 = first places
  2 = second places
  3 = 3rd places
  etc
  
  so Jenson had 6 wins, 1 second, 2 thirds
  Vettel had 4 wins, 2 seconds, 2 thirds
  Webber had 2 wins, 4 seconds, 2 thirds
  
  Because Barrichello had 2 wins but only 3 seconds he drops behind Webber due to 1 less second place.
  1. Larry Simms
    16th November 2009, 19:06
    
    Thanks for the explanation.
    I had thought that this chart was intended to demonstrate something new. It seems that all it’s doing is ranking drivers by wins, with 2nds and if necessary 3rds used as tie-breakers.
    1. Toby Bushby
      16th November 2009, 22:47
      
      The “Drivers ranked by results” table shows what would happen if Bernie had his “medals” idea implemented. That was supposed to happen in ’09. Barrichello and Rosberg would have been shafted for being consistent, while Fisichella would have made a huge leap up the standings.

SaloolaS
16th November 2009, 13:52

Another similliarity – In Interlagos the brazilian rival for WDC had pole position in both years, and in both years the previous WDC was third.

PJA
16th November 2009, 15:47

I think the graph on reliability from 1997 to 2009 is interesting.

Ferrari’s dominance earlier this decade was built on their great reliability, as well as having the fastest car and driver. In subsequent seasons the other teams have also improved their reliability so now it isn’t a surprise if every car finishes the race, whereas the reverse would be true in the 1990s and previous decades.

Also when the points system was changed from 10-6-4-3-2-1 to 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1, and when the rules came in awarding penalties for engine failures, reliability became even more important for teams.

So while it still maybe true that it is easier to make a fast car reliable than a reliable car fast, I don’t think it is as easy to win a Championship with a fast but fragile car as it once was.

Xanathos
16th November 2009, 16:53

“Strange that Button won as many races as the two champions before him, yet there are so many discussions about him being an ‘unworthy’ champion.”

Slightly wrong. Hamilton has won only five races last year. Many people might count Spa as a win for him, but the statistics say otherwise.

rooks
16th November 2009, 18:38

I believed everyone understood by now that it’s not the number of victories that’s the unworthiness debate is about. Summary stats will never help you out on that anyway.

Daniel
16th November 2009, 17:48

Well, in fact Button won more races (six) than Hamilton did (five) in 2008…
It would be more precise to say Button won as many races as the driver with most wins on the past two seasons (Massa in 2008, runner-up with 6 wins and Raikkonen in 2007, champion with 6 wins)

wasiF1
17th November 2009, 1:53

Button is a ‘worthy’ champion.

Iaun Henderson
18th November 2009, 6:34

Re the ‘Drivers ranked by results’ table. Could it also show DNF’s for each driver.

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