Three races into the 2023 F1 season, the qualifying battles have been one-sided affairs at the majority of the 10 teams.
Six drivers have gone unbeaten by their team mates in a straight fight, though at one of those teams reliability problems have kept us from seeing the full picture.
Nonetheless George Russell, Fernando Alonso, Yuki Tsunoda, Alexander Albon and Nico Hulkenberg have all out-qualified their team mates three times out of three. Hulkenberg is an especially impressive case, as he’s returned after three years without a full-time drive to consistently beat Kevin Magnussen.
Russell also deserves singling out for continuing to out-perform Lewis Hamilton. After the Saudi Arabian race Hamilton regretted not following Russell’s lead on car set-up, and today his qualifying effort was compromised somewhat by Hulkenberg.
Max Verstappen has also out-performed his team mate in qualifying, though technical problems have intervened on the last two occasions. Verstappen’s qualifying session ended due to a driveshaft problem in Jeddah, while Perez was plagued by difficulties getting his car stopped on Saturday in Melbourne, which brought his participation in qualifying to an early end. “We suspect an engine setting issue contributed to a lock-up that he had on his first lap in qualifying,” said team principal Christian Horner.
Team mate battles
Methodology: Whichever team’s driver reached the later stage or set the faster lap time is judged the winner, unless either was unable to set a time due to a technical fault
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Q1, Q2 and Q3 appearances
Tap each layer to compare eliminations and appearances by team mates.
Q1 eliminations
Perez’s problem meant Red Bull chalked up their first Q1 elimination of the season so far today.
Alfa Romeo also dropped out in Q1 for the first time this year. Despite the close contest in the midfield, Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu have been eliminated in the same sessions at each round so far, the pair having reached Q2 at the previous two races.
Nyck de Vries made his first appearance in Q2, leaving Logan Sargeant as the only driver yet to make it beyond Q1 this year.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Q2 eliminations
Alpine registered their first Q2 elimination of the season today as Esteban Ocon was pipped to the final place in the top 10 by Alexander Albon, the pair separated by just seven thousandths of a second.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…