Kuala Lumpur
Lap length 5.543km (3.444 miles)
Race laps 56
Race distance 310.408km (192.879 miles)
Pole position Right-hand side of the track
Lap record* 1’34.223 (211.783 kph) by Juan Pablo Montoya, 2004
Fastest lap 1’32.582 (215.536 kph) by Fernando Alonso, 2005
Maximum speed 303kph (188.275 mph)
DRS zone/s (race) Pit straight and final straight
Distance from grid to turn one 650m
UK Times
Fri 27th Mar Start
Practice 1 2:00am
Practice 2 6:00am
Sat 28th Mar Start
Practice 3 6:00am
Qualifying 9:00am
Sun 29th Mar Start
Grand Prix 8:00am
Previous Winners
2014: Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
2013: Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull)
2012: Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)
2011: Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull)
2010: Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull)
Button on board 2013
Hamilton on board 2014 in the wet
Facts and Figures from the last race
Lewis Hamilton took his 34th F1 win in the Australian Grand Prix and now looks likely to surpass Sebastian Vettel as the most successful active driver later this year. he could also pass Ayrton Senna’s total of 41 victories this year.
Vettel hasn’t added to his total of 39 wins since the end of 2013. Hamilton has won 12 races in that time.
Hamilton is making similar inroads on Vettel in the all-time pole positions table. He started at the sharp end for the 39th time this weekend, and Vettel has 45 pole positions.
For the sixth time in his career, Hamilton scored a ‘hat trick’ of win, pole position and fastest lap. The latter was his 21st, putting him level with Fernando Alonso and Gerhard Berger.
Hamilton has decided against using the number one on his car which is reserved for a world champions, making this the first race since the 1994 Australian Grand Prix not to feature a car carrying the number one. For the second year in a row no one has chosen to be number two, and not since the Monaco Grand Prix in 1994 have both those numbers been missing from an F1 grid.
This was the 30th win for Mercedes, 20th consecutive podium appearance and also their 40th points score in a row. Williams were in the points for the 20th race running.
Three drivers claimed the first points of their career in the race, and two of those were rookies. Felipe Nasr brought his Sauber home in fifth place – the best result ever for a Brazilian driver on his debut. Carlos Sainz Jnr also took points home from his first race after finishing ninth. Marcus Ericsson broke his duck after joining Sauber, becoming the first Swedish F1 driver to score points since Stefan Johansson’s remarkable podium finish for Onyx in the Portuguese Grand Prix 26 years ago.
And while he didn’t score a point, at 17 years and 170 days old Max Verstappen became the youngest driver to start an F1 race, beating the previous record (Jaime Alguersuari) by almost two years.
Having failed to score at all in 2014, fifth and eighth for Sauber was their best two-car finish since Nico Hulkenberg and Esteban Gutierrez came in sixth and seventh in Japan two years ago.
However it was a difficult start for the revived McLaren-Honda partnership. Starting their first race together since 1992 – which coincidentally was also in Australia – Jenson Button and Kevin Magnussen could manage no higher than 16th and 17th on the grid. This was McLaren’s worst combined qualifying performance since the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix, where Button started tenth and Hamilton 24th after being excluded from qualifying.
Only 15 cars actually started the race. This is the lowest first race grid since 1966.
When the chequered flag came down just eleven cars were classified, the smallest number since the 2008 Australian Grand Prix, where eight drivers were classified and only six were still running at the end.
Current Standings
