Although being potentially overshadowed by Nico Rosberg’s first win in Japan and Mercedes’ Constructors’ Championship triumph, this year’s Japanese Grand Prix set new Formula One records.
Despite some dramas, like Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton having a poor start or Haas’ Esteban Gutierrez spinning, the race was the first time in the history of the sport that all drivers have finished a Grand Prix at the same circuit on two occasions.
This is the second successive year in which all 22 drivers finished the race after the race had no retirements in 2015.
The last driver to not finish a race at Suzuka was, sadly, the late Jules Bianchi after his fatal crash in 2014.
It is the third time during the last year in which no driver has retired from a race, having also occurred at the 2016 Chinese Grand Prix, making the 379 days between races the most frequent period for this scenario in the sport’s history.
This means that it is also the second time in the sport’s history that all drivers have finished a race twice in one season. The Chinese and Japanese Grands Prix of the current season are the first time this scenario has happened with a full grid of cars starting the race.
Surprisingly in these last three races with no retirements, three different drivers have finished last, with Manor’s Pascal Wehrlein following Sauber’s Felipe Nasr (Japan 2015) and Renault’s Jolyon Palmer (China 2016) in finishing in the final position of the classification.
It is the seventh time in the sport in which every driver has completed a race and sixth time in the last 11 years.
This first happened during the 1961 Dutch Grand Prix with all 15 drivers finishing the race, prior to a gap of 44 years before it would happen again.
All six drivers who started the infamous 2005 United States Grand Prix finished their race, from Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher to Minardi’s sixth-placed Patrick Friesacher as the other 14 cars withdrew from the race.
This happened for a second time in 2005 when all 20 cars finished the Italian Grand Prix at Monza later that year, with McLaren’s Juan Pablo Montoya the first driver over the line and Jordan’s Narain Karthikeyan last over the line in 20th.
Each of the 24 cars on the grid also made it through the 2011 European Grand Prix in Valencia, from Red Bull’s race winner Sebastian Vettel to HRT’s 24th-placed Karthikeyan.
