F1 | Intra-team battle: who’s prevailing?

Fans and journalists love to evaluate drivers, find out who is leading, who has not lived up to expectations, and compare driver performances in the same car. With the engines off for the summer break, this is the perfect time to review what has happened in this first half of 2024.

Of course there are many ways to compare drivers, but one of the most important is pure speed. Without it, no driver will be successful and qualifying is, in theory, the simplified indicator of pace.
Below you can see how teammates rank after 14 races, based on their qualifying performances in Grand Prix (not Sprint). Sessions where a driver from a team was unable to set a time for reasons beyond their control have been excluded, which explains why not all of them make it to 14.

Head to Head Qualifying

Leclerc 8-5 Sainz
Ocon 8-4 Gasly
Alonso 9-5 Stroll
Tsunoda 9-4 Ricciardo
Russel 10-4 Hamilton
Hülkenberg 10-2 Magnussen
Norris 11-3 Plates
Bottas 13-1 Zhou
Albon 13-0 Sargeant
Verstappen 14-0 Perez

While it is a good indicator of who is prevailing in the battles within the team, this metric is rather crude. It is clear that if one driver is consistently within a few thousandths of a second of his teammate, he is still doing a good job and is very close to extracting the maximum from his car, while another may be consistently half a second behind but with a similar score in the head-to-head.

To get a clearer picture of the pilots’ actual speed, we analyzed the Sovertime. ISovertime are based on each driver’s fastest single lap in each race weekend, expressed as a percentage of the overall fastest single lap (100.000%) and calculated as a season average.

This usually refers to qualifying and also has the advantage of largely (though not entirely) eliminating the possibility of a driver being affected by a problem or bad luck in a particular session, because it takes into account the whole weekend. It’s not perfect – it doesn’t tell us how consistent a driver is over a race stint, for example – but as far as raw speed is concerned, it can be interesting.

The Supertime Gap Between Teammates in the First Half of 2024

Gasly-Ocon 0.015s
Russell Hamilton 0.101s
Leclerc – Sainz 0.134s
Norris-Piastri 0.185s
Tsunoda Ricciardo 0.196s
Alonso – Stroll 0.211s
Hulkenberg – Magnussen 0.426s
Bottas-Zhou 0.643s
Albon Sargeant 0.675s
Verstappen Perez 0.953s

The first thing to note is how small the gap is between Alpine drivers Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon. The equivalent of a 0.015-second gap over a 1min 40min lap is a similar gap to that between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso at McLaren in 2007 (0.019 seconds in Hamilton’s favour) and between 2015 Toro Rosso rookies Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz (0.067 seconds).
The two Frenchmen are close in almost every way: the collaboration has certainly not been harmonious, but it underlines the fact that driver performance is not Alpine’s main problem in 2024…

The gap between George Russell and Hamilton at Mercedes is also small. Hamilton is 4-10 down, suggesting the seven-time champion has lost interest ahead of his move to Ferrari. But a 0.101% gap to a driver 13 years his junior does not suggest he has fallen out of favour.

Hamilton’s race pace has also been solid, especially in the last few races, and he currently leads Russell in the drivers’ championship – and would be ahead even if the latter were given the Belgian GP win back.

Some say Hamilton’s performance has slipped this year, but the competition between the two Mercedes drivers is incredibly close.

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

The results of the Ferrari driver pairing can be seen in two ways: either it is a great effort by Sainz to be so close to Charles Leclerc – who has always excelled in qualifying – or it is impressive that Leclerc is still ahead, given that he has probably had a more tumultuous season so far!

Oscar Piastri has narrowed his gap to Lando Norris slightly from 0.227% in 2023 to 0.185%, but there is a sense that both can do even better if they can avoid small mistakes while competing for the top spots in the standings. How that gap changes over the course of the season – and in the years to come – will be interesting.

Yuki Tsunoda’s advantage over Daniel Ricciardo confirms that the Japanese driver should have been considered for the (ultimately unsuccessful) replacement of Sergio Perez, although it must be underlined that the gap has reduced in the last few GPs.

Alonso’s recent slump is illustrated by a modest 0.211% lead over Lance Stroll. The gap between the Aston Martin pair in 2023 was 0.753%, one of the largest in the industry, so we expect the margin to widen over the final 10 races.

The final four pairings feature significant gaps and it is certainly no coincidence that all four contain a driver who will be out of F1 at the end of 2024 or whose position is at risk.

Nico Hulkenberg was the star of 2024 and has a Sauber/Audi deal in his pocket. His 0.426% lead over Kevin Magnussen is even higher than his 0.330% advantage in 2023. He also has 22 points in the standings compared to the Dane’s 5.

Zhou Guanyu’s deficit to Valtteri Bottas at Sauber is more than double that of last year: 0.643% to 0.299%. Bottas has always proven more than adequate in one lap: in his five seasons at Mercedes he has accumulated a deficit of just 0.116% to Hamilton, but the size of the gap so far in 2024 puts the first Chinese F1 driver in a weak position.

Supertimes also highlight who is under the most pressure on the grid.

Photo by: Mark Sutton

At Williams, Logan Sargeant has closed the gap on Alex Albon, but he is still a considerable 0.675% behind in what looks set to be his final season in F1.
Which brings us to the biggest deficit…
Much has been said and written about Perez’s difficulties at Red Bull, but it’s worth putting his current 0.953% gap to Verstappen into context.

First, it’s the largest gap between the two since they became teammates in 2021 (the smallest was 0.545% in 2022). That suggests that whatever the root of Perez’s problems, they aren’t getting better.

The closest a Red Bull teammate has come to Verstappen in a full season is 0.138% and 0.186%, achieved by Ricciardo in 2018 and 2017 respectively. Perez is currently even further behind Albon in 2020 (0.784%).

During his difficult second stint at Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen averaged 0.284% behind Sebastian Vettel in their four seasons together, while the gap between Hamilton and Jenson Button at McLaren was 0.306% from 2010-2012. This serves as a reminder that the Super times are not everything, as Button scored more points than Hamilton in those seasons – but that is not a factor to consider when talking about Verstappen-Perez. The Mexican is currently seventh in the championship, 146 points behind his teammate.

Looking at more obvious number one/number two lineups in recent history, we see a 0.390% gap between Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello at Ferrari from 2000-2005, and a 0.277% margin between Vettel and Mark Webber at Red Bull from 2009-2013.

It should be noted that the various changes to the qualifying format between 2003 and 2009, including the cars running on the fuel load they were supposed to start the race with, skew the data. Interestingly, Barrichello tended to be closer to Schumacher when Ferrari were dominant.

A gap like the one between Verstappen and Perez has not been seen in a top team since the days when Schumacher and Irvine were teammates at Ferrari.

Photo by: LAT Photographic

To find a gap between two leading drivers similar to that between Verstappen and Perez, you have to look at the Schumacher-Eddie Irvine pairing at Ferrari. In their three seasons together, the average was 0.908%, although it should be noted that Irvine has come closer each year after starting a whopping 1.286% behind in the struggling 1996 F310.

Riccardo Patrese was 0.999% behind Nigel Mansell in 1992 but, given Williams’ lead with the FW14B, the Italian still finished second in the drivers’ championship. This gap can also be largely attributed to one driver being comfortable with the active-suspension, electronically-equipped car and the other not, the margin being just 0.111% in the more conventional 1991 FW14.

The Verstappen-Perez disparity is highly unusual in the modern era, which helps explain the widespread surprise that the Mexican has so far maintained his lead.

In summary, the Gasly-Ocon pairing is the most even, the gaps of Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and RB are all significantly close, Alonso is performing worse than expected (given his previous gap to Stroll) but is still leading and the remaining four teams all have serious deficits that put constructors’ points and their drivers’ F1 careers at risk.

Can Perez revive Red Bull’s fortunes after the summer break?

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images