u/F1datageek

I noticed what I thought was a statistical anomaly. Every race Kimi has won so far, there has been a Safety Car deployed during the grand prix.

That got me wondering: does anyone else have 100% win rate in races with a Safety Car?

Here is the exclusive club:

• >!Sergio Perez (6 Wins): 6 out of 6 (Sakhir '20, Baku '21, Monaco '22, Singapore '22, Saudi Arabia '23, Baku '23)!<
• Andrea Kimi Antonelli (3 Wins): 3 out of 3 (China '26, Japan '26, Miami '26)
• >!Pierre Gasly (1 Win): 1 out of 1 (Monza '20)!<
• >!Esteban Ocon (1 Win): 1 out of 1 (Hungary '21)!<

Honorable Mention:

>!Carlos Sainz is just outside the club. 3 of his 4 wins featured a Safety Car (Silverstone '22, Singapore '23, Mexico '24). His only "clean" win was Australia 2024... and even that race ended under a Virtual Safety Car!!<

It got me thinking to another question - who has the highest winning percentage in races affected by a safety car? Check it out the answer here: https://undercutai.app/q/safety-car-win-ratio

I built a Canadian GP stats preview and one number jumped out:

Drivers who win at least 4 of the first 5 races in a season: 14/14 went on to win the World Championship.

Antonelli enters Montreal with 3 wins from the first 4 races. So Canada creates a pretty clean historical fork:

• If he wins: 4 wins from first 5 races → 100% title conversion historically
• If he loses: 3 wins from first 5 races → 73.1% title conversion historically

Here is the list of the 14 instances across F1 history - there are some real heavy hitters in this list. (Note: Mansell in '92 and Schumacher in '04 are the only two drivers to go a perfect 5 for 5).

Driver	Year	Wins in First 5 Races	Won Championship?
Jim Clark	1963	4	Yes
Jim Clark	1965	4	Yes
Jackie Stewart	1969	4	Yes
Ayrton Senna	1991	4	Yes
Nigel Mansell	1992	5	Yes
Michael Schumacher	1994	4	Yes
Damon Hill	1996	4	Yes
Michael Schumacher	2002	4	Yes
Michael Schumacher	2004	5	Yes
Jenson Button	2009	4	Yes
Sebastian Vettel	2011	4	Yes
Lewis Hamilton	2014	4	Yes
Nico Rosberg	2016	4	Yes
Max Verstappen	2024	4	Yes

That said, Montreal is far from a predictable weekend. Between a historically high Safety Car rate (14 of the last 24 races) and high-risk DNF profiles for multiple grid leaders, chaos is practically baked into the circuit's DNA.A few other things that stood out:

• Front Row Dominance: Despite the safety car chaos, Montreal winners over the last 20 years have started from the front row 15/17 times (Pole has converted to a win 64.7% of the time).
• The Benchmark: Hamilton still owns the active-grid record here: 7 wins, 10 podiums, 6 poles.
• The Russell Ceiling: Russell’s Mercedes numbers in Canada are markedly strong compared to his baseline.
• The Norris Drop-off: Norris has a major Montreal drop-off: average finish 10 vs 6.08 career average across all other tracks (doesn't include the 2 DNFs out of 5 races).
• The Ocon Bump: Ocon improves his average finish by 3.41 positions in Canada (the best on the grid) and has a perfect 100% top-10 finishing rate across his six starts here.

Full stat page here if you want to dig into the data:https://undercutai.app/race/montreal

Curious what people think: is Canada more likely to confirm Antonelli as inevitable or is this where the track's chaos finally breaks the streak?