With the first qualifying session of 2019 all done and dusted we’ve decided to take a look at how it stacked up against the same race last year and a few quite interesting things have come to light.
Firstly let’s look at the 2018 performance. These times are the fastest time from each team in qualifying for the 2018 race regardless of session and the 10 teams came out like this:
| Team | Best 2018 time |
| Mercedes | 01:21.164 |
| Ferrari | 01:21.828 |
| RedBull | 01:21.879 |
| Haas | 01:23.187 |
| Renault | 01:23.061 |
| McLaren | 01:23.597 |
| Force India/Racing Point | 01:24.005 |
| Williams | 01:24.230 |
| Toro Rosso | 01:24.532 |
| Sauber/Alfa | 01:24.556 |
Looking at that as differences and percentages gives us this
| Team | Time difference to leader | % of leader’s time |
| Mercedes | ||
| Ferrari | 0.664 | 100.818% |
| RedBull | 0.715 | 100.881% |
| Haas | 2.023 | 102.492% |
| Renault | 1.897 | 102.337% |
| McLaren | 2.433 | 102.998% |
| Force India/Racing Point | 2.841 | 103.500% |
| Williams | 3.066 | 103.778% |
| Toro Rosso | 3.368 | 104.150% |
| Sauber/Alfa Romeo | 3.392 | 104.179% |
Skipping forward a year to 2019’s qualifying and this is how the same 10 teams performed
| Team | 2019 Best time |
| Mercedes | 01:20.486 |
| Ferrari | 01:21.190 |
| RedBull | 01:21.320 |
| Haas | 01:21.826 |
| McLaren | 01:22.304 |
| Sauber/Alfa Romeo | 01:22.314 |
| Toro Rosso | 01:22.511 |
| Force India/Racing Point | 01:22.532 |
| Renault | 01:22.540 |
| Williams | 01:24.360 |
Already we can see that the fastest 4 teams from last year are still in the same positions in 2019, But there’s a few changes further down the order. McLaren are up one place to 5th while Sauber/Alfa Romeo jump from the slowest in 2018 to 6th fastest with Toro Rosso up from 9th in 2018 to 7th this year. All this is at the expense of Renault who drop from 5th to 9th with Racing Point dropping one place to 8th and Williams falling to the bottom of the timesheets
When you look at the time differences and the percentage gap between the teams this is how it works out
| Team | Time difference to leader | % of leader’ s time |
| Ferrari | 0.704 | 100.875% |
| RedBull | 0.834 | 101.036% |
| Haas | 1.340 | 101.665% |
| McLaren | 1.818 | 102.259% |
| Sauber/Alfa Romeo | 1.828 | 102.271% |
| Toro Rosso | 2.025 | 102.516% |
| Force India/Racing Point | 2.046 | 102.542% |
| Renault | 2.054 | 102.552% |
| Williams | 3.874 | 104.813% |
So if we look at the comparisons between last year and this year we can see that every team except Williams has improved on their 2018 times with some great results for some of them.
| Team | Difference from 2018 | % of 2018 time |
| Sauber/Alfa Romeo | -2.242 | 97.349% |
| Toro Rosso | -2.021 | 97.609% |
| Force India/Racing Point | -1.473 | 98.247% |
| Haas | -1.361 | 98.364% |
| McLaren | -1.293 | 98.453% |
| Mercedes | -0.678 | 99.165% |
| Ferrari | -0.638 | 99.220% |
| RedBull | -0.559 | 99.317% |
| Renault | -0.521 | 99.373% |
| Williams | 0.130 | 100.154% |
Now if we look at the relative times to the leader we can see where the gaps have closed or increased on Mercedes since the start of 2018 and unsurprisingly it’s Sauber that have made the biggest advance with Toro Rosso also getting relatively closer to the front, whereas Ferrari, RedBull, Renault and Williams find themselves further back on the fastest time than in 2018
| Team | % of leader's time 2018 | % of leader's time 2019 | % difference from 2018 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sauber/Alfa Romeo | 104.179% | 102.271% | -1.908% |
| Toro Rosso | 104.150% | 102.516% | -1.634% |
| Force India/Racing Point | 103.500% | 102.542% | -0.958% |
| Haas | 102.492% | 101.665% | -0.828% |
| McLaren | 102.998% | 102.259% | -0.739% |
| Mercedes | 100.000% | 100.000% | 0.000% |
| Ferrari | 100.818% | 100.875% | 0.057% |
| RedBull | 100.881% | 101.036% | 0.155% |
| Renault | 102.337% | 102.552% | 0.215% |
| Williams | 103.778% | 104.813% | 1.036% |
So it looks like Alfa Romeo and Toro Rosso have made the biggest steps forward in terms of closing the gap, but it looks like we were right to worry about Williams having gone backwards from 2018