Räikkönen’s 2018 Austin win set F1 record for longest gap between victories

Kimi Räikkönen ended a five-and-a-half-year wait for victory by winning the 2018 United States Grand Prix in Austin. At 39, he became the oldest grand prix winner since Nigel Mansell in 1994 and set the record for the longest interval between Formula 1 victories.

His previous win had come at the 2013 Australian Grand Prix. The gap to Austin spanned 114 Grands Prix, although Räikkönen raced in 111 of them; that eclipsed Riccardo Patrese’s previous mark of 98. Patrese’s gap ran from the 1983 South African Grand Prix to the 1990 San Marino Grand Prix. The Austin victory came on 21 October, exactly 11 years after Räikkönen secured his only F1 drivers’ title.

Räikkönen started second behind Lewis Hamilton’s pole-sitting Mercedes and made the most of Ferrari’s race pace. Max Verstappen finished second, Hamilton third and Sebastian Vettel fourth. The result denied Hamilton a chance to clinch his fifth drivers’ title that weekend; he needed to outscore Vettel by eight points.

RacingNews365’s retrospective points to disruption and a mismatch with the car behind the long wait. Lotus’s finances forced Räikkönen to miss the final two rounds of 2013. Ferrari’s 2014 F14 T had a pull-rod front-suspension layout that did not suit his preference for a sharp front end. From 2015 onward, the article says, team strategies often prioritized Vettel’s title bids as Mercedes dominated the hybrid era.

The Austin victory was the last of Räikkönen’s 21 career wins.