All this talk of pole position and Lewis Hamilton not winning from it has made me think. What does wins from pole tell us about a driver?
Firstly, the overall leaders. Michael Schumacher has won 40 Grand Prix from pole. Ayrton Senna has won 29. Then there are 6 drivers on between 10 and 20 Grand Prix wins from pole:
Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Sebastian Vettel, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark, Fernando Alonso and Mika Hakkinen.
Hamilton has won 9 races from pole - thats far from a bad record - he is equal 10th overall with Ascari and Lauda.
So, of those 12, who converts the highest percentage of their poles:
Clark and Fangio were driving, of course, in an age of higher unreliability. Ascari, ironically, probably wasn't - the majority of his poles were in 1952-53 when his F2 Ferrari package wasn't required to be pushed to breaking point in order to win.
But it is somewhat surprising to see that the surest converter of poles to wins in that lot is Fernando Alonso.
Firstly, the overall leaders. Michael Schumacher has won 40 Grand Prix from pole. Ayrton Senna has won 29. Then there are 6 drivers on between 10 and 20 Grand Prix wins from pole:
Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Sebastian Vettel, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark, Fernando Alonso and Mika Hakkinen.
Hamilton has won 9 races from pole - thats far from a bad record - he is equal 10th overall with Ascari and Lauda.
So, of those 12, who converts the highest percentage of their poles:
Clark and Fangio were driving, of course, in an age of higher unreliability. Ascari, ironically, probably wasn't - the majority of his poles were in 1952-53 when his F2 Ferrari package wasn't required to be pushed to breaking point in order to win.
But it is somewhat surprising to see that the surest converter of poles to wins in that lot is Fernando Alonso.