F1 Teammate Qualifying Battles 2026: Who Is Winning?

F1 teammate qualifying battles in 2026 have one clear mismatch and one clear surprise. Across the first 15 rounds, through the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso out-qualified Lance Stroll in 11 of 13 shared sessions, and Carlos Sainz beat Alexander Albon in 11 of 14. The surprise sits at the other end of the table: four teams are separated by a single qualifying result, 8-7, and one of them is Mercedes. Here is what the GridRaces qualifying data says, and what it can't say.

Method: we compared the final qualifying classification of two team-mates in the same round, 2026 season, rounds 1-15. Sepang (round 16) isn't in our qualifying data yet, so it is excluded.

Who is winning F1 teammate qualifying battles in 2026?

Start with the lopsided ones. Alonso's 11-2 over Stroll is the most one-sided full-season pairing in our data by share of sessions won, and it comes with a size: where both drivers reached the same stage of qualifying, Alonso was faster on average by about 0.350 seconds across 12 rounds. Not close. Sainz over Albon is 11-3 with an average gap of roughly 0.303 seconds, though only six sessions had both drivers setting times at the same stage, so treat that number gently.

Then there is Pierre Gasly over Franco Colapinto at Alpine: 11-4 across all 15 rounds, with Colapinto about 0.375 seconds slower on average in the nine sessions where we can compare like for like. Oliver Bearman leads Esteban Ocon 10-4 over 14 rounds.

Why are four teammate battles so close?

Because the margins at the front are tiny and the sessions are short. Charles Leclerc leads Lewis Hamilton 8-7 at Ferrari. Andrea Kimi Antonelli leads George Russell 8-7 at Mercedes. Gabriel Bortoleto leads Nico Hülkenberg 8-7 at Audi. Sergio Pérez leads Valtteri Bottas 8-7 at Cadillac.

Four pairings, four identical scorelines. A run of coin flips could look like this, and it makes one thing clear: at the front, Saturday has been decided by hundredths, not by hierarchy. It would be a stretch to read a pecking order into any of them and that includes the Mercedes one. If you want to know who is really ahead at those teams, the telemetry page is the place to look at pace rather than position.

What does Max Verstappen's qualifying record against Isack Hadjar tell us?

Max Verstappen out-qualified Hadjar in 8 of their 11 shared rounds, which sounds like a comfortable win. Look at the lap times and it gets stranger: in the eight rounds where both reached the same stage, Hadjar's average deficit was about 0.013 seconds. That is thirteen thousandths.

Two readings fit that, and we would rather show both than pick the flattering one. One: Verstappen wins small and often while Hadjar's wins, when they come, are large. Two: our sample is small and one or two messy sessions are doing the work. We can't separate them from this data. What we can say is that the scoreline overstates the distance between them, and that Red Bull's driver pairing has been less settled than the headline suggests, because Verstappen also shared the garage with Liam Lawson for three of these rounds (3-0 to Verstappen).

The counter-argument: head-to-head counts are a blunt tool

A result count treats a 0.001-second win and a 0.600-second win as the same point. It ignores sessions where one driver had a mechanical problem, a red flag or a traffic jam on the final run. It also lumps together drivers who changed seats: Lindblad's 8 wins at the RB team are split across two different teammates in our data, and Lawson appears on both sides of the Red Bull and RB ledgers. The right way to use these numbers is as a map of where to look, not a verdict.

The average-gap numbers have their own flaw. They only count rounds where both drivers reached the same session stage, so they quietly drop the weekends where one driver was knocked out early, which are often the most telling ones. That is why we give the sample sizes rather than hiding them.

Verdict: Alonso and Sainz are the quiet stories of 2026

The most useful thing in this data is not a single team, it is a pattern. At the front, the teammate battles are coin flips. In the middle of the grid, they are not. Alonso, Sainz, Gasly and Bearman have each beaten their team-mate in more than 70 percent of shared sessions. Whether that is talent, car fit or a teammate having a rough year, qualifying alone cannot tell us.

Our call: when the Singapore Grand Prix qualifying session arrives at Marina Bay, the teammate pairs worth watching are the four 8-7 ones, because that is where a single session can move the scoreline. Want to test that? Make your picks on the Singapore round and see how your calls compare in a league with friends.