Which drivers are out-performing their team-mates by the largest margin? Who has put in the least laps so far this year? And how is each grid slot performing? We have a plethora of statistics in our mid-season stats special!
ULTIMATE QUALIFYING PACE
Firstly, let’s take a look at a master grid based upon the teams’ and drivers’ best three sector times in qualifying at each round of the season so far. The first table shows that Mercedes’ pace over the twelve rounds so far is over 3.5 seconds faster than nearest rivals Ferrari. Meanwhile, the same gap which covers all of the top nine teams covers the gap between Racing Point in ninth and Williams in tenth:
If you add the drivers’ best sector times together, you’ll see that Lewis Hamilton is the qualifying king in 2019, with his total time being almost 1.5 seconds faster than team-mate Valtteri Bottas. The McLaren pair are the most evenly matched, with just 0.054 seconds separating them, while there’s a 46 second gap from Hamilton to Robert Kubica.
Which drivers put their best three sector times into one lap most frequently? The table below shows each driver’s average gap from their best three sector times in qualifying to their actual fastest qualifying lap at each round of the season so far. George Russell has achieved his potential most frequently in 2019, setting his ultimate pace on his fastest lap on five occasions. Kimi Raikkonen and Kevin Magnussen are the only drivers yet to put all of their best three sectors into one qualifying lap. Charles Leclerc is the driver who is furthest away from achieving his potential in qualifying, just as he was in 2018.
BEST AND WORST SECTORS
The table below shows the sectors where each team have ranked best and worst in qualifying. Mercedes have only been outside of the top two teams in one sector so far this season, while there’s only one sector where Williams haven’t been slowest. Alfa Romeo are the surprise team who’ve been fastest in a sector this year – Antonio Giovinazzi benefited from slip-streaming in the opening sector at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
TEAM-MATE BATTLES
Next up, the team-mate battles! The table below shows how many sectors each driver has out-paced their team-mate in so far this season, based on their best sector times in qualifying. You can find more team-mate battle data here.
And here’s the average gap between team-mates in each sector. Unsurprisingly, most of these values are tiny, with the smallest gap at McLaren being just over one thousandth of a second! The largest gaps are at Red Bull, Racing Point and Williams, where the differences are over a tenth of a second.
LAPS COMPLETED
Mercedes have completed the most laps of any team so far this season, but Red Bull are now just twelve laps behind following Valtteri Bottas’ recent retirement at the German Grand Prix. Williams are third in the list having not recorded a DNF so far this year – they’ve still completed 32 less laps than Mercedes. Haas have completed the least laps, and McLaren are second to last – which makes their points tally all the more impressive.
In terms of most laps completed by drivers, only Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen have finished every lap of the season so far, with Sebastian Vettel having lost a lap at the British Grand Prix. Romain Grosjean – who has had six retirements so far this year – is at the bottom of the list.
POSITIONS GAINED AND LOST
The total sum of positions gained and lost puts Lance Stroll at the top with 49 positions gained from his starting place over the twelve rounds of the season. However, the table below removes drivers who didn’t finish the race from the equation, which puts Lance Stroll second in the list on average, behind Carlos Sainz. Note that this data does not take retirements, and therefore positions lost with retirements due to driver error, into account.
GRID SLOTS
Next, we turn our attention to the grid slots. With seven wins having come from second on the grid so far this year, it’s no surprise that the grid slot has scored more points than any other. 20th on the grid has scored 18 points – but all of those came from Sebastian Vettel’s second place finish in the German Grand Prix. Vettel and Daniil Kvyat’s podium finishes at Hockenheim are the only podium finishes to have come from outside the top five so far this season. There also seems to be a curse for grid slot eleven this year – no driver has scored points having started from there since the Australian Grand Prix!
More data on the results from each grid slot can be found below:
| Grid Slot | Wins | Podiums | Points Finishes | Non-Points Finishes | DNFs | Total Points Scored |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | 11 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 218 |
| 2 | 7 | 10 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 240 |
| 3 | 2 | 8 | 11 | 0 | 1 | 176 |
| 4 | 0 | 4 | 11 | 0 | 1 | 140 |
| 5 | 0 | 1 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 95 |
| 6 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 54 |
| 7 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 0 | 1 | 60 |
| 8 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 48 |
| 9 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 51 |
| 10 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 12 |
| 11 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 8 | 3 | 6 |
| 12 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 4 | 1 | 25 |
| 13 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 21 |
| 14 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 8 | 2 | 16 |
| 15 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 8 | 2 | 13 |
| 16 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 3 | 10 |
| 17 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 9 | 1 | 4 |
| 18 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 1 | 1 |
| 19 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 1 | 4 |
| 20 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 18 |
| PIT | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 |
DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP
So here’s how things stand in the championship as we head towards the second half of the season. Lewis Hamilton is comfortably in the lead, while Valtteri Bottas is under increasing pressure from Max Verstappen for the runner-up spot. With 234 points left up for grabs in 2019, only the top fifteen in the Drivers’ Championship are still eligible to win this year’s title. For Alexander Albon to win this year’s World Championship he’d have to win every race and score the fastest lap at every round without Hamilton scoring any more points.
The season resumes with the Belgian Grand Prix on September 1st. Don’t miss a moment of the action at the legendary Spa circuit – track your favourite teams and drivers with F1 TV.
