For the first time in years, Verstappen trails teammate in a head-to-head battle

In the qualifying duel between Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar, it’s still 1-1. Although some count the Australia qualifying as a win for the Frenchman, GPblog never counts technical issues for a driver as a loss in the qualifying or race duel. As a result, Hadjar and Verstappen are still level.

Of the two qualifying sessions where the drivers could be directly compared, Hadjar opened up the bigger gap. In Japan, Hadjar was 0.158s faster than Verstappen. Max was 0.119s quicker than Hadjar in China, which means the Frenchman now leads by an average of 0.020s in their head-to-head qualifying gap, an area where Verstappen hasn’t lost to a teammate since 2018.

There are interesting developments at other teams as well. Kimi Antonelli now leads the qualifying duel with George Russell, after being no match for the Brit as a rookie. Oscar Piastri has also started strongly in qualifying compared to the reigning world champion. However, it hasn’t yet yielded points for Piastri.

At Ferrari, Charles Leclerc is once again the stronger over a single lap, and at Williams, Carlos Sainz is increasingly taking charge. As a rookie, Arvid Lindblad is hardly behind Liam Lawson and beat him in Japan for the first time in qualifying, with a huge margin of almost four tenths.

Fernando Alonso hasn't lost to Lance Stroll for nearly two years now. That didn’t change in Japan. Esteban Ocon finally won another duel against Oliver Bearman, but on average the Brit is still the better of the two Haas drivers. Gabriel Bortoleto was again faster than Nico Hulkenberg.

At Alpine, it’s no longer a surprise that Pierre Gasly is faster than Franco Colapinto. The gap between the two is getting alarmingly large. At Cadillac, Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas are fairly close. The Mexican currently holds a slight edge.