If not for his post-race Brazilian Grand Prix penalty, Lewis Hamilton would have broken yet another all-time Formula 1 record in the 2019 season.
What could’ve been the first career Formula 1 podium finish for Red Bull Racing rookie Alexander Albon turned into the first career podium finish for ex-Red Bull Racing driver Pierre Gasly, the driver whom Albon replaced at the Milton Keynes-based team during the 2019 season, in the blink of an eye.
Albon was running in second place with under two laps remaining in the 71-lap Brazilian Grand Prix around the 15-turn, 2.677-mile (4.308-kilometer) Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace road course in Sao Paulo, Brazil when Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton made contact with him, sending him spinning.
Gasly moved around Albon and Hamilton to jump from fourth to second place, several seconds behind race leader and eventual winner Max Verstappen, also of Red Bull Racing. Gasly ended up winning a drag race over Hamilton to secure a career-high second place.
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Hamilton celebrated on the podium for the 17th time in 2019 in what was the season’s 20th and penultimate race, exactly like he would have had Albon held on for second place ahead of him in third.
However, a shadow of doubt was cast over his third place result.
Indeed, he was stripped of his podium finish after the race. He was issued a five-second time penalty for spinning Albon out, a clearly unintentional move that he personally apologized to Albon for making. As a result, he was demoted to seventh place; the incident had taken place on the lap of a restart, so several drivers were running in a pack, making this penalty more detrimental than it otherwise would have been.
Hamilton went on to win the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina Circuit in dominant fashion, leading all 55 laps around the 21-turn, 3.451-mile (5.554-kilometer) Yas Marina Circuit road course on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates to secure his 17th podium finish of the season.
When Hamilton was stripped of his third place finish in Interlagos, his penalty had potential major historic implications. First off, he now absolutely needed to win the season finale (which, as stated above, he ended up doing anyway) to break the all-time single-season points record. Secondly, he could no longer break the all-time single-season podium finishes record.
By winning in Abu Dhabi, he celebrated on the podium 18 times in 2019, only not doing so in Austria, Germany and Singapore. But his victory in this race was only his 17th podium finish, which fell shy of a new all-time record.
This record has now been set or matched on six occasions. Michael Schumacher finished on the podium in all 17 races in the 2002 season before Sebastian Vettel went 17 for 19 in the 2011 season. Hamilton then tied the record for the first of now four times by going 17 for 19 in the 2015 season. He proceeded to go 17 for 21 in both the 2016 and 2018 seasons.
No driver had ever celebrated 18 Formula 1 race results on the podium in a single season before Lewis Hamilton did so in the 2019 season. However, with only 17 official podium finishes, his post-Brazilian Grand Prix penalty ultimately cost him what would have been an all-time record.
Fortunately for him, it’s not like he didn’t break a ton of other records through the 2019 season, and it’s not like he isn’t poised to do the exact same thing in the 2020 campaign.