Rate it!

2 votes

Some key statistics ahead of Sunday's Turkish Grand Prix plus a look back at the previous four races at the circuit.

WINS

Britain's championship leader Jenson Button has won five of the first six races of the season for the Mercedes-powered Brawn GP team.

No driver has ever won five of the first six and not become champion.

Five British drivers, all of them champions - Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart and James Hunt - have won six races in a single season.

Button has now won six races in his career, a feat bettered by only nine of his countrymen.

If Button wins in Turkey, it will be his fourth victory in a row. The last driver to do that was Spain's Fernando Alonso for Renault in 2006.

The last British driver to win four successive races in a single season was Mansell in 1992. Damon Hill won the last race of 1995 and first three of 1996.

PODIUMS/POINTS

Button is chasing his seventh successive podium finish on Sunday.

Schumacher holds the record for successive podium finishes, with 19 in 2001-02.

TURKEY

In its four years of existence, the Turkish Grand Prix has only ever been won by the driver starting on pole position.

Ferrari's Brazilian Felipe Massa is chasing his fourth successive win in Istanbul.

Only four drivers (Juan Manuel Fangio, Clark, Ayrton Senna, Schumacher) have won four successive races at the same venue.

QUALIFYING

Button has been on pole four times this season.

Monaco was the first time since the end of last season that a Ferrari driver had started on the front row, with Kimi Raikkonen lining up in second place.

PODIUMS

Raikkonen's third place in Monaco ended a run of five races without a Ferrari driver on the podium.

McLaren have now gone seven races without being on the podium.

Brawn GP have finished one-two three times in six starts.

POINTS

Force India have yet to score a point in Formula One, a run of 24 races, although Monaco was their best performance yet with both cars into the second phase of qualifying and Giancarlo Fisichella finishing ninth.

Brawn's Button and Rubens Barrichello are the only drivers to have scored in every race so far this year.

McLaren have failed to score points for two races in a row for the first time since 2004.

FINISHES

BMW-Sauber's Nick Heidfeld has been classified in his last 34 races, a Formula One record. The German's last retirement was in the United States in June 2007.

MILESTONE

Red Bull's Mark Webber made his 127th grand prix start in Monaco, overtaking triple world champion Jack Brabham as the Australian driver to have competed in most races. Webber has yet to win a race, however.

PREVIOUS RACES

2008 - Felipe Massa (Ferrari)

Massa won from pole for the third year in a row, with McLaren's Lewis Hamilton slowing because of concerns about wear of his front tyre. Honda's Brazilian Rubens Barrichello made a record 257th race start.

2007 - Massa, Ferrari

Massa won from pole position again while Lewis Hamilton suffered a puncture 15 laps from the end that dropped him from third to fifth. Raikkonen was runner-up in Ferrari's second one-two of the season.

2006 - Massa, Ferrari

Massa followed up his first Formula One pole position with his first grand prix victory. Renault's Alonso beat Ferrari's Michael Schumacher to second place by barely half a car's length after a nose-to-tail duel over the closing laps.

2005 - Kimi Raikkonen (Finland) McLaren

Raikkonen won from pole position while Alonso finished second, leaving the Spaniard 24 points clear of the Finn with five races to go. He was helped by McLaren's Juan Pablo Montoya, who spun on the penultimate lap while his team were heading for their first one-two finish in five years.

CIRCUIT DETAILS

The undulating layout is one of three anti-clockwise tracks in the championship - the others being Interlagos in Brazil and Singapore.

Likened to Spa in Belgium, it has 14 turns - six of them right-handers - and four straights. About 67 per cent of each lap is spent at full throttle.

The left-handed triple apex turn eight is a real test, taken at around 250kph and generating some of the highest G-forces of any circuit.

The Hermann Tilke-designed circuit is on the Asian side of Istanbul. Track temperatures can reach 55 Celsius (131 Fahrenheit).

Reuters