Monaco Grand Prix and Indianapolis 500 Winners – Same Country, Same Year (May 28, 2018)

It is a good time to be an Australian racing fan.

The Land Down Under is the homeland for two drivers who won two of the world’s biggest races Sunday – Daniel Ricciardo dominating the Monaco Grand Prix, and Will Power taking command late in the Indianapolis 500. Both drivers were first-time winners in their respective races.

Interestingly enough, this is only the fifth time winners of both races were from the same country in the same year, and the only time its happened on the same day. Australia became the third country to claim both wins in the same year, with only Brazil and the United Kingdom having produced winners of both races prior to 2018.

It marked 25 years since it last happened, with Brazilian drivers claiming both races in the same year. Ayrton Senna claimed the Monaco Grand Prix on May 23, then a week later, fellow Brazilian – and also another Formula 1 champion – Emerson Fittipaldi, won the 77th Indianapolis 500. The pair also accomplished the feat in 1989, with Senna winning at Monaco on May 7 and Fittipaldi taking the checkered flag on May 28, after a spirited duel with Al Unser Jr., with the two touching wheels on Lap 199 and Unser hitting the wall.

The United Kingdom was the first country to win produce winners of both races in the same year, doing so in back-to-back years in 1965 and 1966. And Graham Hill was on the winning end of both events.

In 1965, Hill won the Monaco Grand Prix on May 30, while Jim Clark triumphed in dominating fashion in the Indianapolis 500 the following day, May 31. Regardless of missing the Monaco Grand Prix, Clark won six F1 races en route to winning the Formula 1 World Championship for the second time, the only time a driver won both the 500 and the F1 title in the same year.

The following season, Hill won the Indianapolis 500 on May 30, eight days after Jackie Stewart won the Monaco Grand Prix.

Six other countries have produced the winners of both races throughout the years: France, New Zealand, Canada, Italy, Sweden and Colombia.