2001 Grand Prix Season Summary

Unlike last year which was a fairly close two-horse race between Ferrari and McLaren, the 2001 Grand Prix season was a three-way fight with a runaway winner. Ferrari and Michael Schumacher retained both the Constructors’ and Drivers’ Championship titles but Williams-BMW became a force to be reckoned with and ate into McLaren’s results so that Ferrari ended up with almost as many points as the other two put together.

Michael Schumacher became the most successful F1 driver ever when he passed Alain Prost’s record of 51 wins at the Belgian GP. By the end of the year he had raised the record to 53. He also took the record for the most Drivers’ Championship points scored.

Ferrari had nine wins (Michael Schumacher 9, Rubens Barrichello 0 ) and 11 poles (Michael Schumacher 11, Rubens Barrichello 0) to McLaren’s four wins (Mika Hakkinen 2, David Coulthard 2) and two poles (Mika Hakkinen 0, David Coulthard 2) and Williams-BMW’s four wins (Ralf Schumacher 3, Juan Pablo Montoya 1) and four poles (Ralf Schumacher 1, Juan Pablo Montoya 3).

Surprisingly — considering the emphasis placed on qualifying in first place due to the supposed difficulty in passing on today’s GP circuits — for the second year running only seven races were won from the pole (Michael Schumacher 6, Juan Pablo Montoya 1) and in nine of the other 10 the winner was not even from the same team as the pole-sitter.

Apart from wins and poles Ferrari, McLaren and Williams had most of the podium places tied up as well. Between the three of them they collected 46 of the 51 possible podium spots missing only five third places. Those five spots were shared by just four other drivers; Jacques Villeneuve (BAR) two third places, Giancarlo Fisichella (Benetton) one third place, Nick Heidfeld (Sauber) one third place and Eddie Irvine (Jaguar) one third place.

Minardi was the only team that failed to score a single point towards the Constructors’ Championship all season. They have only scored one point in the last five years.

Eight drivers (Fernando Alonso [Minardi], Enrique Bernoldi [Arrows], Luciano Burti [Jaguar and Prost], Tomas Enge [Prost], Tarso Marques [Minardi], Gaston Mazzacane [Prost], Alex Yoong [Minardi] and Ricardo Zonta [Jordan]) failed to score a single Drivers’ Championship point all season. Of these eight only Alonso and Bernoldi started every race.

There were more driver changes this season than in many recent years with 26 different drivers spread among the 22 available seats. Prost led the way with five different drivers throughout the year and neither of its original drivers left at season’s end. Jaguar, Jordan and Minardi also made changes during the year.

The average number of finishers in each race was 13, the same as last year.

There were no life-threatening driver injuries all season. Luciano Burti (Jaguar and Prost) sat out the last three races after sustaining a serious concussion in an accident at the Belgian GP and Heinz-Harald Frentzen missed the Canadian event after crashing heavily during qualification.

Posted: Friday, November 9th, 2001