You probably know that 2026 has seen the introduction of the biggest change to the regulations since 2021, and it's creating all sorts of challenges for the drivers. Given that we're about halfway through the season, I thought this seemed like a good time to do a quick analysis comparing driver pace over the season so far, while also looking at whether anyone is improving and might be one to watch for the remainder of the season.
How the comparison works
For now, we're just looking at relative qualifying and race pace within teams. We'll:
- Compare the drivers' average pace over the season so far.
- Look at trends to see who might be improving.
For now, we can do this using just lap-time information. Later in the year, I might try to break down driver styles to see whether anyone is changing how they drive to suit the car.
For race-pace comparisons, we'll aim to find stints of at least five laps where both drivers were in the race on the same tyre. If we don't have that, we'll exclude the race. This might mean that some pairings don't have many data points.
Overall qualifying pace H2H
Some of these stats won't really surprise anyone following the season so far. Hülkenberg's average looks very good compared with Bortoleto's, but that's mostly due to an outlier result in Miami. Similarly, Sainz seems to be getting the better of Albon by a larger margin than I expected. On the other hand, the McLaren and Ferrari drivers are as close as expected, whilst the Cadillac drivers, at least in qualifying trim, seem to be getting everything they can out of the car.
Race pace H2H
I was just saying that the Cadillac pair seem to be getting the most out of their car, yet Pérez appears to have a strong edge over Bottas on race pace.
A common thesis for this discrepancy, as with Williams, would be that Cadillac are running different set-up plans and strategies on their two cars, with the aim of gathering as much data as possible. This is backed up by the spread of differences. In this case, we also have limited data on the Cadillac pair running the same strategy, which doesn't help the analysis.
The Red Bull drivers appear further apart than expected, but with Hadjar usually falling behind in qualifying, he's spending more time having to overtake during races.
Finally, Antonelli is, on average, nearly 0.5% faster than Russell during races, a gap that doesn't look like closing.
Can we measure improvement?
It seems quite hard to extract any clear relative trends, so I've included the full plots for each team below for you to explore.
The only clear trend to me appears to be Norris, who has been improving consistently relative to Piastri since Monaco and showing more and more confidence. Will this trend continue over the next few races?
Mid-season verdict
A quick look at the data probably won't surprise anyone who has been following the season so far, but I was interested to see the pace differences between the Williams and Mercedes drivers.
To determine whether the drivers are improving relative to their teammates, we might need to dive deeper into braking points, compare apex speeds and see whether we can spot any trends. This will feature in future articles on The Grid Debrief as I develop the analysis further, so stay tuned!