Robert Kubica and Adrian Sutil giving team mates a hard time in qualifying
Adrian Sutil has been almost half a second quicker than Vitantonio Liuzzi
Six races into 2010 we’ve got a reasonably clear picture of which drivers are doing the best job of the all-important qualifying sessions.
So far two drivers in particular stand out for bring significantly faster than their team mates over a single lap: Robert Kubica and Adrian Sutil.
Team mates in qualifying
Thanks to the refuelling ban and the dropping of ‘race fuel’ qualifying, for the first time since 2002 we can see how team mates compare against each other on Saturdays without resorting to speculative ‘fuel-corrected’ calculations.
The graph below shows the average gap between each driver and his team mate in dry qualifying sessions this year*:
Team mates' qualifying performances compared (click to enlarge)
Robert Kubica clearly has a significant advantage over rookie team mate Vitaly Petrov – almost one second per lap faster than the Russian on average in qualifying. That’s almost twice the advantage of any other driver.
While the gaps between some of the new teams’ drivers can partly be explained by variations in the quality of machinery on offer to their drivers, the gulf between the Force India drivers is striking.
Adrian Sutil’s advantage of almost half a second over Vitantonio Liuzzi is the largest gap between two non-rookie team mates. Liuzzi has only out-qualified once, and that was partly thanks to Petrov’s crash in Q2 in Monaco.
Of the new-for-2010 drivers, Nico Hülkenberg has been closest to his team mate’s pace in qualifying so far (ignoring HRT’s all-rookie line-up).
But don’t overlook Kamui Kobayashi, who’s only made two more starts than Hülkenberg, and has been slightly quicker than Pedro de la Rosa on average so far.
The McLaren and Lotus drivers are very closely matched. Not only is the average gap between their two drivers less than a tenth of a second, but each has out-qualified the other the same number of times:
| Pos | Driver | Times out-qualified team mate |
| 1 | Robert Kubica | 6 |
| 1 | Timo Glock | 6 |
| 3 | Nico Rosberg | 5 |
| 3 | Adrian Sutil | 5 |
| 3 | Sebastien Buemi | 5 |
| 6 | Fernando Alonso | 4 |
| 6 | Rubens Barrichello | 4 |
| 6 | Bruno Senna | 4 |
| 9 | Jenson Button | 3 |
| 9 | Lewis Hamilton | 3 |
| 9 | Sebastian Vettel | 3 |
| 9 | Mark Webber | 3 |
| 9 | Jarno Trulli | 3 |
| 9 | Heikki Kovalainen | 3 |
| 9 | Pedro de la Rosa | 3 |
| 9 | Kamui Kobayashi | 3 |
| 17 | Felipe Massa | 2 |
| 17 | Nico Hülkenberg | 2 |
| 17 | Karun Chandhok | 2 |
| 20 | Michael Schumacher | 1 |
| 20 | Vitantonio Liuzzi | 1 |
| 20 | Jaime Alguersuari | 1 |
| 23 | Vitaly Petrov | 0 |
| 23 | Lucas di Grassi | 0 |
Average starting grid
If you take an average of all the drivers’ grid positions so far, Red Bull unsurprisingly fill the top two positions.
Nico Rosberg and Kubica in third and fourth places are somewhat more of a surprise. Yes, it’s partly thanks to them not getting caught out in Malaysia, but it also reflect consistently strong performances by both of them so far this year.
Although Vettel has the best average qualifying position so far this year, Webber has beaten him to pole position in the last two races. Although Vettel has an average advantage of 0.2 seconds per lap, much of that can be explained by a single, costly mistake of Webber’s in qualifying at Bahrain.
| Pos | Driver | Average starting position |
| 1 | Sebastian Vettel | 1.8 |
| 2 | Mark Webber | 2.2 |
| 3 | Nico Rosberg | 5.2 |
| 4 | Robert Kubica | 6.8 |
| 5 | Michael Schumacher | 7.3 |
| 6 | Jenson Button | 7.8 |
| 7 | Felipe Massa | 8.0 |
| 8 | Lewis Hamilton | 8.2 |
| 9 | Fernando Alonso | 9.3 |
| 10 | Adrian Sutil | 9.5 |
| 11 | Rubens Barrichello | 10.5 |
| 12 | Nico Hülkenberg | 12.2 |
| 13 | Vitantonio Liuzzi | 13.2 |
| 14 | Sebastien Buemi | 13.3 |
| 15 | Kamui Kobayashi | 13.7 |
| 16 | Pedro de la Rosa | 14.0 |
| 17 | Vitaly Petrov | 15.5 |
| 18 | Jaime Alguersuari | 15.5 |
| 19 | Heikki Kovalainen | 19.0 |
| 20 | Jarno Trulli | 19.2 |
| 21 | Timo Glock | 19.5 |
| 22 | Lucas di Grassi | 22.3 |
| 23 | Bruno Senna | 22.5 |
| 24 | Karun Chandhok | 23.5 |
Who’s impressed you most in qualifying this year? Have your say in the comments.
*For each qualifying session the drivers’ lap times were compared in the final phase of qualifying where both cars competed. For example to compare the times for the McLaren drivers at Australia the Q2 times are used, as Lewis Hamilton did not reach Q3. In circumstances where a driver did not set a time, no comparison has been made.
Image (C) Force India F1 Team
Dennis said on 24th May 2010, 23:19
Not only in Qualifying but I think that this year Robert Kubica is the driver that impressed me the most throughout! Watching him drive in Monaco was absolutely breathtaking! I can’t blame Petrov for not being able to keep up with Kubica after watching that. No big surprises really. Rosberg did pretty well, Alonso was expected to do better than Massa (even if he didn’t participate in one qualification he’s ahead 4-2) and Alonso and Hamilton are the most fun to watch in the race since they have to come from the back of the field a lot for some reason. Well the one thing that does surprise me is how close Button is to Lewis. Nice job there!
Adam Tate said on 25th May 2010, 9:15
Woah, all this Nick and Robert bashing and endless comparison is intense! Why can’t people agree that they are both good drivers? Yes Kubica has a win to his credit, but Ole’ Nick has eight 2nd places to his name, more than any other non -winning driver, and he achieved 4 of those in 2008 alone, when it was rare to see anyone but Massa or Hamilton winning. Nick could have easily inherited a win like Kubica did when Hamilton, Kimi and Massa were taken out of contention in Canada 08′ or like Heikki did in Hungary 08 when Massa retired while leading at the end. Luck just wasn’t on Nick’s side for this to happen. It doesn’t mean Kubica can’t be great, because he clearly has the potential, but it doesn’t mean Nick is a has been either. If I were running Renault I would have snapped them both up and continued their run as team mates, it was easily the most consistent, calm and one of the most capable driver pairings in recent seasons.
Adam Tate said on 25th May 2010, 9:22
In fact, I’d bet that if Heidfeld were partnering Kubica in the other Renault, he’d be consistently scoring points, unlike Petrov, no offense against the rookie of course, but with Nick and Robert I’d bet Renault would be ahead of Mercedes in the points standings by now.
Max said on 25th May 2010, 14:29
well, I am not sure why we are got excited by Alistair’s comments. He is just one of these Kubica’s haters. He belongs to a rare breed of F1 fans, but they do exist. Even if RK would be a 5 time F1 champ they would always find some arguments that this does not make him a good driver. So I suggest let us simply ignore him
Maciek said on 26th May 2010, 10:44
It’s worse than that – he’s just a **** disturber. He’s the same one who posted a while back arguing that Jerez ’97 was all Villeneuve’s fault. Funny thing that then, as now, once you start pointing out the gaping chasms of logic in his ‘arguments’ he’s nowhere to be seen.
andrew said on 26th May 2010, 20:43
He’s probably cut off by the moderator, looking through the 180 degree looking glass at rebbutals & typing until his keyboard is smoking to no avail