Five races into the Formula One season and Oscar Piastri leads Lando Norris by 10 points with Max Verstappen a further two behind. It looks like a three-way fight between the two McLaren men and the defending champion in the Red Bull.
With that in mind, we sift through the data from the initial batch of races to decipher the best-performing driver of the three contenders, and also try to discover who has the best chance of winning the drivers’ title.
To do that we look at their performances over qualifying and races and also consider how that might play out if these current trends continue.
Qualifying
The current era of F1 cars was supposed to reduce the negative effect dirty air has on overtaking. Unfortunately, what started fairly well in 2022 has regressed. Qualifying is again even more critical for deciding a race. This is especially true given how small the performance gaps are throughout the field.
The truest measure of any driver is how he fares against his team-mate and that is no more exposed than over one flying lap. Currently Piastri leads Norris 4-2 from five main and one sprint qualifying sessions and is on average 0.15 seconds faster than his team-mate.
Verstappen, meanwhile, has a perfect 6-0 record and was 1.4 seconds faster than Liam Lawson on average and is currently 0.7 seconds faster than Yuki Tsunoda. Clearly that is impressive, but it is not comparable to the two McLaren drivers because of the calibre of the driver in the second Red Bull.
Average qualifying position
On average so far the McLaren has been just over a quarter of a per cent faster than the Red Bull, even if it has taken “only” three poles from six qualifying sessions. That equates to 0.27 seconds on a theoretical 1min 40sec lap. Who, though, has been getting the most from their car?
Not Norris, whose average qualifying position is 4.76. That is not just below Piastri (2.0) and Verstappen (3.0), but also George Russell (3.5) in the Mercedes. As he said, he is letting himself down and making life (and his championship hopes) harder than it needs to be.
Piastri is yet to qualify lower than third and has four front-row starts compared to Norris qualifying in the top two only twice with starts of sixth and 10th in the last two rounds. Verstappen has two poles and one other front-row start.
Maximising lap time
Another useful measure of how well a driver is performing over one qualifying lap is whether they are maximising their potential. You can work this out by looking at the difference between a driver’s best lap time and comparing it to their theoretical best – calculated by totalling a driver’s best three sector times.
For instance, a driver may have recorded best sector times of 20.1sec, 32.5s and 29.4s (1min 22sec in total) but their best lap time in qualifying could be 1min 22.2sec, which means they left two-tenths on the table from what they theoretically could have achieved.
Looking at the data from the lead trio it is painfully obvious that Norris trails by this metric. He has put together his theoretical best in Q3 twice. That is the same as Piastri, but one fewer than Verstappen.
However, dig a little deeper and the picture is worse. His best lap time is on average 0.187 seconds down on his theoretical best, giving away seven-tenths in the Chinese sprint race, 0.147 seconds in qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix and two-tenths in Bahrain.
By contrast, Piastri is giving away just 0.061 seconds and Verstappen a minuscule 0.043 seconds. Piastri has only given away more than a tenth on two occasions and Verstappen once. Clearly this has been driven by those well-noted Norris errors, but it is interesting to see just what he is giving up compared to his title rivals.
Races
There are several metrics you can look at but, again, the lack of quality in the second Red Bull makes any team-mate comparison almost pointless. Away from Verstappen’s utter dominance at Red Bull, Piastri has finished as the lead McLaren in three of the five grands prix.
Norris, though, has the higher average finishing position at McLaren at 2.4 compared to 3.0, excluding the sprint race. That is largely because of Piastri’s ninth-place finish in Australia. Piastri has been the stronger driver since that point.
Verstappen’s average finishing position of third, then, is more impressive than both Piastri and Norris. China was a tough race for him (not as tough as Bahrain) but he still extracted close to the maximum from the car. Perhaps the only race he did not maximise the performance of the RB21 was in Saudi Arabia, when he let a lead slip at the start and incurred a five-second time penalty.
Looking at laps led, Piastri leads the way with 124, with Verstappen on 66 and then Norris on 60. Of course, it is better to lead the final lap of the race than have led all of the previous ones. Still, it is clear who is doing better.
Winning margins can be a misleading statistic because there are so many other factors involved such as race and tyre management as well as safety cars. They provide a decent guide overall, but come with caveats. Of the meaningful races there is only really Verstappen’s 1.4 second-margin in Japan and Piastri’s 15 seconds in Bahrain (after 22 laps of racing) and his 2.8 seconds in Saudi Arabia.
The same can be said of the fastest race lap as it does not really measure anything useful and this year there are no points awarded for it. As another data point, though, Norris has three, Piastri one and Verstappen none.
Verdict: Verstappen the better driver, Piastri the more likely champion
There are other intangible factors that will play a part in the destination of the title in the next 19 rounds. Errors will be one of them, as will mentality and fortune – especially if it stays as close as it is.
Considering what we have looked at above, we would rate Verstappen as the top-performing driver by a small margin over Piastri. The Dutchman will likely have a battle on his hands to stay in championship contention, though, because of his car.
Norris, in the fastest car, has been unable to come close to the consistency of either driver and has been outscored by Piastri by 33 points since his victory in Melbourne. There is such a long way to go, and the McLaren is so strong, that discounting him would be premature. Yet from what we have seen so far he is not proving up to the job of a title challenger and is making too many mistakes.
What could prove decisive for Piastri’s world championship hopes is consistency. Not just of his performances, as shown above, but with the performance window of his car. It seems to be there for him every weekend and he can get close to the maximum from it.
The fluctuating nature of the RB21 could be Verstappen’s downfall, despite being the class of the field so far. When it is there he will be in the equation at the front, but when it is not he will struggle to be, perhaps even falling back behind a Mercedes or a Ferrari as well as both McLarens.