Formula 1: Lewis Hamilton one race away from a historic mark
By Asher Fair
If Lewis Hamilton finishes the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on the lead lap to close out the 2019 Formula 1 season, he will join Michael Schumacher in another exclusive group.
Heading into the 2019 Formula 1 season, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis Hamilton had already pretty much done it all. The five-time champion had won 73 races, second to only seven-time champion Michael Schumacher’s 91 victories, and he held the pole positions record with 83 after breaking it two seasons ago.
Hamilton is now a six-time champion, having clinched his sixth title in the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas earlier this month, with 83 victories and 87 pole positions.
Considering the fact that he hasn’t won fewer than nine races in a single season since 2013, he is well-positioned to become the winningest driver in Formula 1 history at some point next year.
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He is also the early favorite to win next year’s world championship having now won three in a row and five of the last six. Another title would tie him with Schumacher for the most in Formula 1 history.
But Hamilton has a chance to do something else this weekend in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina Circuit that has only been done once in the history of Formula 1, and Schumacher is the only driver who has pulled it off.
Should Hamilton complete all 55 laps of this Sunday’s race around the 21-turn, 3.451-mile (5.554-kilometer) Yas Marina Circuit road course on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, he would become just the second driver to compete all laps in a Formula 1 season and the first to do it since Schumacher pulled it off en route to winning the 2002 championship.
Through the first 20 races of the 21-race season, Hamilton has completed all 1,207 laps that have been contested. He has recorded 10 victories and 16 podium finishes and a career-high average finish of 2.45.
When Schumacher pulled off this feat in the 2002 season, he completed all 1,090 laps over the course of the 17-race schedule. Schumacher won 11 races that year and finished on the podium in each of the six he did not win en route to an all-time record average finish of 1.41, a record that will likely never come close to falling.
Hamilton is currently on a 32-race streak of completing every lap (1,913 laps), having not failed to do so since the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring in July of 2018 when he was forced to retire with a fuel pressure issue.
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Will Lewis Hamilton finish this Sunday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on the lead lap to become just the second driver in Formula 1 history and the first since Michael Schumacher in the 2002 season to complete every lap in a season? This race is set to be broadcast live from Yas Marina Circuit beginning at 8:05 a.m. ET on ESPN2 this Sunday, December 1.