“The Professor” has given his verdict on Lewis Hamilton’s tying his mark of 51 Grand Prix victories, now second on the all-time list.
He approves.
Four-time World Champion Alain Prost was long F1’s leading race winner before Michael Schumacher surpassed him and surged to an incredible 91 career wins, but has since been entrenched in second place on the all-time list thereafter.
However, with Hamilton’s eighth win of 2016, the Englishman and three-time World Champion has now equaled him for second all-time.
Prost sent a tweet in the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s Mexican Grand Prix to congratulate Hamilton on the achievement.
Comparing eras is always going to be a difficult art. Prost had to beat a wealth of competitors in a wealth of different formulas.
His 51 wins came from 1981 through 1993. The only year in that stint when Prost raced but did not win was in 1991, driving a difficult Ferrari chassis and missing the final race in Adelaide.
Otherwise, Prost never built up the percentage of wins in the same way Hamilton did. Instead, he spread them out pretty evenly.
His first three wins came in 1981 with Renault and subsequent win totals were 2 (1982), 3 (1983), 7 (1984), 5 (first World Championship in 1985), 4 (second title in 1986), 3 (1987), 7 (1988, losing out to Ayrton Senna), 4 (third title in 1989), 5 (1990) and 7 (fourth and final title in 1993).
By contrast, Hamilton has won 11, 10 and 8 races in the last three seasons with Mercedes AMG Petronas – so more than half of his 51 Grand Prix wins – 29 of them – have come in his last 57 races. That’s a staggering strike rate of over 50 percent. And it also means his first 22 wins came in his first 129 starts, or a hit rate of 17 percent.
Their styles are different but for two more weeks, their career win totals are the same. Hamilton has 51 wins from 186 starts, Prost 51 from 199 starts (202 GP entries), so Hamilton has a slightly better overall win percentage (27.4 to 25.6 percent).
A Hamilton win in Brazil, if he could achieve it, would be his first – and would move him into sole second place all-time.
The focus of the Detroit Monster Energy Supercross round was on the mid-pack battle while Aaron Plessinger pulled away from the field, but when he crashed after hooking his foot in the dirt, the results once more looked like we’ve come to expect, with Chase Sexton, Cooper Webb and Eli Tomac sharing the podium for the fifth time in 10 rounds.Justin Barcia was part of an exciting, four-rider battle in the middle of Detroit’s A-Main. – Feld Motor Sports
For Sexton, Plessinger’s late-race crash was a vindication of sorts. Several times already this season, Sexton has crashed while battling for the lead and the points that has cost him keeps him sporting the red plate. He lost points in Detroit for a different reason, however.
Sexton was allowed to keep the win, but was penalized seven points for jumping in a red cross section of the course. As a result, he dropped four points to Webb and two to Tomac. Sexton is now 17 points behind Webb in the championship hunt.
One week after snatching the red plate from Tomac for the first time in 2023, Webb stretched his advantage by two. With his second-place finish, Webb holds a three-point lead over Tomac, which essentially means both riders control their fate in the coming weeks. Webb continues to have a sweep of the top five this season with his sixth consecutive podium.
Coming off his worst finish of the season, Tomac rebounded to finish third. His eighth-place result last week was partially attributed to a stiff neck that hindered him in traffic and he still suffered some of those same effects in Detroit. Before Plessinger’s crash, he was destined to be the only rider in the three-man title scrum to finish off the podium in Detroit.
It is surprising what one position can do for one’s confidence.
Justin Barcia scored his fourth top-five of the season. He was part of the exciting four-man battle that dominated the middle stages of the race before Sexton and Webb gained a little separation. Finishing less than three seconds behind Tomac, he kept that rider honest for the entire race.
Coming off his first win of the season, Ken Roczen finished fifth. It was his seventh top-five of the season and it elevated him to fifth in the standings.
Hunter Lawrence tied his brother Jett Lawrence with 10 wins each after another dominating ride in the Detroit Supercross race and the results in the points continue to widen. With his fifth win in six rounds and a worst finish of third, Lawrence now has a 35-point advantage over Nate Thrasher with four rounds remaining. Finishes of 14th or better in the final four mains will give him his first 250 championship.
Strong starts have been one of the keys to Hunter Lawrence’s success in 2023. – Feld Motor Sports
Jett will have an opportunity to retake his wins’ lead as Supercross heads west for the next two rounds in Seattle and Glendale, Arizona.
Nate Thrasher earned his third second-place finish of the season with a gap of 7.6 seconds to Lawrence. He won the overall in Arlington earlier this season, but a 15th-place finish in the opening round in Houston and 10th in Daytona hurts his championship chances.
Haiden Deegan scored his second podium and fourth top-five in six rounds of his young career. On his way to that finish, he rode aggressively against his teammate Jordon Smith in the heat race. Fans are getting a glimpse of what his on-track personality might be.
Jeremy Martin continues to be the model of consistency. He has not finished worse than sixth or better than fourth in six rounds now and that has allowed him to close to within two points of third in the 250 East championship standings.
Max Anstie entered the race weekend second in the points, but a hard crash in heavy traffic early in the main forced him to retire after two laps. Earning only one point for the round, he plummeted to fifth in the standings.
The news was worse for Smith, who was dropped out of the top nine in his heat after the altercation with Deegan and failed to advance through the LCQ. In the last chance race, he stalled his engine and had to mount a determined charge. He got only as high as seventh in that race after crashing while attempting to make a pass on fourth-place Jack Chambers.
