Written off beforehand as a ’boring’ race, Valencia in fact hosted a frenzy of overtaking manoeuvres last Sunday.
Before the race, Jenson Button and Mark Webber wrote off their chances of climbing through the field on the basis that passing is always almost impossible between the Spanish street layout’s concrete barriers.
But the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat has counted up the genuine passing moves in Sunday’s race, and the tally is 58 — second only to China in 2012.
Last year in Valencia, and with twice as many DRS overtaking zones, there were only 29 overtakes.
Webber and Lewis Hamilton made the most passes on Sunday - 6 each - while Fernando Alonso, Vitaly Petrov and Michael Schumacher all successfully overtook 5 rivals.
"It was a crazy day," Australian Webber said after climbing up from 19th on the grid to fourth at the finish.
The 2012 record for overtaking is Shanghai’s 72, followed by Valencia (58), Bahrain (43), Malaysia (40), Barcelona (38), Canada (35), Australia (30) and Monaco (9).