Shock feat achieved not even Verstappen or Hamilton have managed – On This Day

Thirty-one years ago today, Damon Hill produced a victory at the Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide that has never been matched since. 

The Williams driver won by two full laps over second-placed Olivier Panis, a feat that remains the most recent occasion in Formula 1 history where the race winner lapped every other finisher in the field.

Hill started from pole and led every one of the 81 laps, crossing the line in a time of 1:49:15.946 with no serious challenge to his supremacy. 

The scale of the margin was extraordinary even by the standards of the era, and it has stood as a statistical outlier, with no winner in the three decades since managing to put the entire field a lap down.

The result carried no championship weight. Michael Schumacher had already wrapped up both the drivers' and constructors' titles for Benetton two rounds earlier at the Pacific Grand Prix, meaning Hill's win in Adelaide was pure redemption rather than title business. 

After a campaign littered with errors and high-profile clashes with Schumacher, the victory offered Hill a measure of personal momentum heading into the off-season and eased some of the media scrutiny that had built up around him.

Chaos behind triggers staggering winning margin

The race itself was chaotic behind Hill. David Coulthard, Hill's Williams team-mate, had been leading before sliding into the pit wall on lap 20 after carrying too much speed into the pit entry.

Roberto Moreno repeated the exact same mistake two laps later, crashing into the same stretch of concrete. 

Schumacher and Jean Alesi then collided on lap 23 fighting over position through turn three, damage to the Ferrari's front wing and the Benetton's suspension ending both their afternoons.

The weekend had already been overshadowed by a frightening qualifying accident involving Mika Häkkinen, whose McLaren crashed into the barriers at Brewery Bend after a tyre deflation. 

The Finn required an emergency roadside tracheotomy from circuit medical staff, a moment that underlined how perilous the sport remained even as Hill's afternoon in the race itself unfolded without drama.

With so many rivals eliminated and the lapped traffic stacking up behind him, Hill cruised home untroubled, closing out a season of personal struggle with the kind of dominant display that, three decades on, still stands alone in the record books.