Red Bull with less laps than McLaren in 2017

McLaren had the worst season start in history while Red Bull is third with already one victory in the bag – but Red Bull is even worse than McLaren Honda in the number of laps charts.

For the first time in its F1 history, McLaren did not score any points for the first seven races in the season, but thanks to Alonso’s ninth place in Baku it never happened that they did not score in the first eight races.

Reliability is, with a lack of engine power, the biggest McLaren weakness this season that in Canada has brutally prevented them from winning the first point while Alonso was tenth.

While we were all shocked by the fact that McLaren struggled to finish in the first few races, in Azerbaijan both Alonso and Vandoorne finished the race for the first time in 2017 after Honda updated their problematic MGU-H.

This allowed them to increase the number of laps to 716, thus kicking Red Bull to the bottom of the charts, who did only 685 laps this year. But all the similarities between these two teams stop, because Red Bull has collected 137 points in the first eight races, winning the points in all races with Ricciardo victory in Azerbaijan.

Verstappen with only 56.88% completed race laps in 2017

Out of a total of six Red Bull retirements in the first eight races, Verstappen was a victim four times – Bahrain (brakes), Spain (collision), Canada (battery) and Azerbaijan (power unit).

Ricciardo retired in Australia (power unit) and Russia (brakes). The result – Ricciardo has more than double the number of points from Verstappen (92: 45).

Max Verstappen has only 277 of the possible 487 laps this season (56.88%) while Vettel and Hamilton, the leading duo of the championship, are the only drivers who competed all the laps so far.

Esteban Ocon is very close to 100% with 484 laps, and Fernando Alonso is at the penultimate position with 318 laps.

Force India tops team charts, Red Bull at the bottom

Force India drivers are very consistent this season and their VJM10 is very reliable, thanks to the Mercedes power unit and gearbox.

Perez and Ocon completed 956 laps (98.15%), 10 more than the Mercedes while Red Bull is last with 685 laps, worse than McLaren Honda, which has major problems with the Honda engine.

Much better is neither Renault with 738 laps nor Williams with 745 laps.

Mercedes’ engine with most laps

Last year only Mercedes had four teams using their engines, and this year they are equal to Ferrari (three teams). It should be noted that Sauber uses last year’s Ferrari engines (056/5).

Mercedes engines completed 2647 race laps, 106 more than Ferrari, while Renault was third with 2172 rounds (counting TAG Heuer as Renault).

If we look at the number of engines per team, Mercedes is on 882, Ferrari on 847, Renault on 724, and Honda on 716 laps.