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GP of Europe: What the results do not say. Exclusive from Petr Minarik

The usually boring and rather sleepy Grand Prix of Europe, held in Valencia in recent years, had a completely different scenario this year. Although at the beginning the veteran Vettel was in control with his probably fastest car, in the end there was both interest and excitement. But as the results have already circled the world, let us take another point of view. To help let us take at least some of the facts that this 866th F1 race set a record in history with.

One of this moments was undoubtedly Sebastian Vettel' s pole position. As it was already the 33rd for this Switzerland dwelling German, he pulled up to Alain Prost in statistics tables. Now he shares the third place with the four-times world Champion, whereas Michael Schumacher (68) and Ayrton Senna (65) are far ahead.

The race which was the 850th event of the World Championship with British drivers and where, due to the Glock's digestive problems, 23 monoposts collected at the start and even though it brought a surprising victory to the domestic Alonso after six year's break, there was also a number of other remarkable facts. For example, it was the 160th start for Felipe Massa and the 15th for Grosjean, as well as the fact that the marshals - amongst whom you could not miss a former GP driver Mika Salo - awarded above than average number of penalties. Including the 20 s one for Maldonado for his collision with Hamilton when fighting for the Hamilton's third position. And it was this overtaking maneuver that substantially influenced the podium in Valencia. It was Michael Schumacher in the end who stepped up onto it to his 21st third place in his GP career. The first time after his return to F1, 155th time in his career and after a hundred races flat from his last podium at the China GP in 2006. It means after hardly believable 2093 days. It is not without interest that the seven-times World Champion (he ensured the 130th podium for the start number #7) is not the best in this statistics: the podium absence of the current Toyota's GT Championship driver Alexander Wurtz lasted in F1 129 races. In other words, 7 years, 9 months and 11 days (between the British GP 1995 and the GP of San Marino 2005)!

But also the other Mercedes driver - Nico Rosberg made it to historical records in Valencia. He took the fastest lap in the race which was the tenth for Mercedes and therefore a Jubilee. And more than that: it came after almost 57 years from the Italian GP 1955 when Stirling Moss reached the fastest lap for this German team with W196! But also Fernando Alonso made his record in history: thanks to his 24 laps he was leading on the home turf he broke the 7500 km in the lead of Formula 1 races (even if with his 7504 km he is 16644 km behind Michael Schumacher) and his victory from the 11th starting position is the first win from that place since Coulthard's victory in Austrian GP 2003.

And what did the GP of Europe bring to this year's Championship?

There are only three drivers who took the full 2414 racing kilometers (Alonso, Raikkonen and Rosberg), whereas Grosjean took the least (1465). The winning Spaniard is also the only one to score in all eight races this year ( by the way, in the last 26 races he did not score only once, in Canadian GP 2011) and, on the contrary, the first time this year Lewis Hamilton went without points. Nico Hulkenberg has won so far the most points for his fifth place in Valencia and also his Silverstone's team Force India had a reason to celebrate: 16 'European' points from Valencia has been the most they collected in one race. In contrast, sixth time in a row there were no points left for the off-spring of Minardi, Toro Rosso from the Italian Faenza...