At the Australian Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc became only the 26th driver in the history of the sport to achieve a ‘grand slam’ of pole position, fastest lap and leading every lap on the way to victory.
At that point half of those drivers had achieved that rare feat more than once. But in the very next round at Imola Max Verstappen became the 14th to do so.
Between them they are the first pair of drivers to score ‘grand slams’ in the same season since 1979. They were Gilles Villeneuve at Long Beach for Ferrari and Jacques Laffite at Interlagos for Ligier.
Verstappen grabbed the new maximum haul available for an F1 driver at the first time of asking, since the series increased the value of a sprint race win to eight points. He left Imola with an extra 34 points in his pocket – more than he’d scored over the opening three rounds combined.
Red Bull nearly did the same, but Leclerc split Verstappen and Sergio Perez on the sprint race rostrum, meaning the Milton Keynes squad trousered 58 of a possible 59 points.
Gallery: 2022 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in picturesVerstappen bagged the 22nd win of his career, putting him level with Damon Hill in 14th place on the all-time winners list. He now has 17 fastest laps, which puts him level with Rubens Barrichello.
While F1 has now declared that the driver who is quickest in Friday qualifying at sprint race weekends is considered the pole position winner, the fact remains pole for the grand prix is decided by the Saturday sprint race, as the regulations make inarguably clear. Fortunately, no one other than Verstappen can lay claim to having taken pole position by any measure last weekend. it was his 14th, giving him as many as Barrichello again, plus Alberto Ascari, James Hunt and Ronnie Peterson.
Perez followed Verstappen home in the grand prix, delivering Red Bull’s 18th one-two finish, and their first for six years, the last coming courtesy of Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo at Sepang in 2016. The other 16 were all…