Painful difference for Red Bull Racing in Turkey even more obvious

The most important duel for an F1 driver

In Formula 1, your teammate is your biggest rival. You can show your speed to competitors as your teammate is the only driver who drives the equipment if you do. If you win that duel, you can count on the attention of larger teams. If you lose the duel, your career can soon be over.

Some duels can be very exciting, but there are also years when the gaps between teammates are enormous. The latter is the case this year. In six teams the qualifying battle is being dominated six times by one driver in six teams having a gap between the two teammates more than two tenths.

Verstappen and Russell cause damage 

In those six teams, the difference between a number of drivers was further shown in the rain in Turkey. Of course, you have to be in the right place at the right time, but Max Verstappen has been stronger than Alexander Albon all year round, so people don't even look mad when Verstappen is two seconds faster than Albon.

With Williams, it was even worse, if possible. George Russell has already won every qualification battle over Nicholas Latifi this season, but due to a mistake by the Canadian, the gap was now even more than eleven seconds. Yes, they were difficult conditions, but those differences are huge. In other teams, the gaps are not as big, but they still indicate clear differences.

The ideal example

Not for the first time this year, Hamilton won the Valtteri Bottas qualifying match with almost seven-tenths difference. Daniel Ricciardo also showed his class again, with a one-second gap on Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly was again much faster than Daniil Kvyat. This time by more than three seconds.

There are also differences with the normal order. For example, Sebastian Vettel won a duel with Charles Leclerc for the first time in a long time and Lance Stroll by Sergio Perez. Are they better in the rain than their teammate or was this an exception to the rule? With all the other teams we see that the differences remain the same proportionally.

There is only one team that has done perfectly well this year. After fourteen qualifiers, it is 7-7 in the duel between Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz and the Brit was on average 0.013 faster per qualification. The gap was bigger this weekend, but with 0.465 the gap between Norris and Sainz was the least of all teams even in the changing circumstances.