P1racenews AI automatic summary:
Although the points in F1 are distributed on Sunday, F1 drivers battle for pride in qualifying on the Saturday. RacingNews365 breaks down each of the qualifying battles throughout the course of the year.
In 2023, Max Verstappen had the most pole positions with 12, followed by Charles Leclerc with five. George Russell and Lewis Hamilton had a close battle as teammates at Mercedes, with similar performance throughout the season. Hamilton was slightly faster on average, by just 0.017 seconds. The smallest gap in lap times was at Alpine, where Pierre Gasly was just 0.007 seconds faster than Esteban Ocon. Yuki Tsunoda outperformed rookie Liam Lawson by 0.582 seconds at AlphaTauri. Logan Sargeant was also consistently slower than teammate Alex Albon by 0.560 seconds. Verstappen outqualified Sergio Perez 20 times, with an average gap of 0.495 seconds. Lance Stroll started behind Fernando Alonso 19 times, conceding an average of 0.440 seconds.
