Formula 1 sets high mark not seen since 2012

A total of 12 different drivers have now finished on the podium in the 2020 Formula 1 season, a mark that hadn’t been seen in eight years.

Entering Sunday’s Turkish Grand Prix at Intercity Istanbul Park, the only thing left to solidify in terms of this year’s Formula 1 world championships was who would win the driver title.

The 2020 season has been a dominant one for Mercedes, which secured the constructor championship after only the 17-race season’s 13th race and also secured that one of their two drivers, Lewis Hamilton or Valtteri Bottas, would win the driver title.

Even the driver championship was practically already decided, given Hamilton’s massive lead over Bottas in the standings, and he indeed solidified it with a victory in this race.

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However, while Mercedes have been by far and away the top team in the sport this year en route to securing their seventh consecutive world constructor and driver championships, the rest of the field has been far more competitive than Formula 1 has seen in a long, long time.

Entering Sunday’s 58-lap race around the 14-turn, 3.317-mile (5.338-kilometer) road course in Tuzla, Turkey, the 2020 season had seen 10 different podium finishers, a mark that hadn’t been seen since the 2014 and 2015 seasons, the first two seasons of the Mercedes-dominated V6 turbo hybrid era.

Once the race had concluded, that total had grown by 20% for the entire 2020 Formula 1 season.

Racing Point’s Sergio Perez, who hadn’t finished on the podium since his third place finish at Baku City Circuit in the 2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, tied his career-best finish with a second place result, something he hadn’t pulled off since the 2012 Italian Grand Prix at Autodromo Nazionale Monza.

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, who hadn’t finished on the podium since his second place finish at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in last year’s Mexican Grand Prix, finished in third.

Prior to this race, Perez’s top finishes of the season were his fourth place finishes in the Russian Grand Prix at Sochi Autodromo and in the Eifel Grand Prix at the Nürburgring.

Vettel’s top finish of the season had not even been in the top five; it was his sixth place finish in the Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring.

Now the 2020 season has seen 12 different podium finishers, which accounts for more than half of the field. This is the highest mark for a single season since the 2012 season saw 13.

In fact, the battles outside of the Mercedes domination almost look a lot more like Formula 2, which has seen between 13 and 21 different podium finishers and an average of 16.69 each season since 2005, including 15 so far in 2020, than they do Formula 1, given the fact that the sport hadn’t even seen double-digit podium finishes since 2015 prior to this year.