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Worth the wait
Steven LynchOctober 26, 2014
If Lewis Hamilton holds on and wins the F1 championship this year it will be six years since he last won it. Is this a record gap between titles? asked Jeff Robertson
If Lewis Hamilton can hang on to his lead, he will equal the record gap between a driver's first two titles, set by Graham Hill: he won in 1962 and 1968. Hamilton's first title - after his agonising near-miss in 2007, his rookie season - came in 2008.
Jack Brabham also had a six-year gap between his second drivers' championship, in 1960, and his third and last one in 1966.
The biggest gap between titles, though, was by Niki Lauda: after winning in 1975 and 1977, he waited seven years until 1984 for his third and last drivers' championship.
At that time Lauda had the longest span as a champion - between 1975 and 1984 - but Michael Schumacher later exceeded that: his first title was in 1994, and his record seventh and last was ten years later in 2004.
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