Six rounds remain in Formula 1’s longest ever season, but nine of the ten head-to-head qualifying battles from the start of the season have already been decided.
Team mate battles
At the beginning of the 2024 season, for the first time ever in Formula 1, the team mate pairings at the start of the season were the exact same that they had been at the end of the previous year.
Such unprecedented continuity was perhaps surprising, given how lopsided many of the qualifying duels between the ten sets of team mates had been that season. Alexander Albon had whitewashed his rookie team mate Logan Sargeant, out-qualifying him every single time. Sergio Perez had only beaten world champion Max Verstappen on one occasion, in Jeddah, thanks to Verstappen suffering a driveshaft failure in Q2 (Verstappen also failed to set a time in Q3 in Miami).
Although there are only six grand prix qualifying sessions remaining in the 2024 season, almost all of the team mate battles between drivers have been decided already. This is at Alpine, where Esteban Ocon leads Pierre Gasly by four. But in nine of the other ten original match-ups, the margins are already at least six.
Once again, Albon beat Sargeant in every single qualifying session over the first 15 rounds of the championship. Verstappen is again dominating Perez, but Red Bull’s embattled eldest driver does have a legitimate triumph over the world champion from the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, in which there was no car-related excuse for the driver of car number one.
Lando Norris, George Russell, Charles Leclerc, Fernando Alonso, Nico Hulkenberg, Valtteri Bottas and Yuki Tsunoda have all clinched the season-long qualifying battles with their respective team mates. Among those, Russell is the only one who did not also win his battle in the previous season.
There are, however, two other duels to add some intrigue for the rest of the year alongside the one at Alpine. With Franco Colapinto brought into Williams to replace Sargeant, the rookie has gone 1-2 over his first three qualifying sessions compared to Albon. However, Albon’s loss in Baku was largely down to him never getting an opportunity to complete a run on new tyres at the end of Q3, thanks to a team error.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
With this week’s confirmation that Daniel Ricciardo is out at RB, Liam Lawson will go head-to-head against his old friend Tsunoda to the end of the season….
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…