After the two double qualifying sessions held on street circuits and interrupted by a red flag before the natural deadline, Formula 1 returns to a permanent circuit and consequently the pole position returns in the hands of one of the title contenders. Max Verstappen was the only one capable of achieving a time under the benchmark of 1:30, although still far from what was the record lap of 2019. But how have times changed in two years?
As practically every Saturday, the team that appears at the top of this special ranking is always Williams who in 24 months managed to improve 7 tenths. Russell, who had to stop at the end of Q1 in 2019, managed to gain access to Q2 today as, marking an important step forward, especially in the second sector, where the engine performance is very important. Also good from the point of view of acceleration, while he is the only one to lose less than a tenth in the most technical part.
With the second place of AlphaTauri opens the list of teams that have worsened, in terms of time, compared to two years ago. As for the team from Faenza, as well as that of Grove, there is a faster time both in the first and in the second sector, with the AT01 performing better in acceleration, while in the mixed part it loses about 7 tenths.
A loss equal to that recorded by Red Bull which is in third place, but which still got pole position today. Milton Keynes’s car is forced to leave a tenth on the road in the first section, but the good work done by Honda in the last two years has allowed the team to gain two and a half tenths on the long Mistral straight. In total, Verstappen lost almost six tenths as compared to 2019.
This is followed by Aston Martin who loses a second compared to Perez’s Q2 time on the 2019 Racing Point.
From fifth place in Alfa Romeo onwards, no team managed to gain ground against its 2019 performance. The Swiss car lost almost two tenths in the first sector and just over one in the second, symbolizing how much the PU Ferrari has returned to a good level of competitiveness, almost like that of two years ago. Also for Alfa the third sector must be reported slower by 1.1 seconds, for a total of 1.4 seconds lost.
The same is the deficit of Alpine, which loses almost everything in the third sector, almost 1.3 seconds. In fact, in the first two sections of the French circuit, the home team has accumulated a delay of just 157 thousandths compared to the Renault of 2019.
At McLaren, the switch from Renault to Mercedes engine did not help to gain time in the second sector, as the deficit was about a tenth. More influential, however, is the time recorded in the acceleration section (246 thousandths lost) and in the mixed section where the Woking car was the worst. Almost a second and a half has been lost in 24 months!
The gap between the time of the SF90 and that of the SF21 is also about 1.8 seconds, even if unlike McLaren, the central sector in Ferrari was not so excellent. The Red indeed showed itself to be the car that lost the most time, with a delay of over two and a half tenths. The third sector stands at almost 1.4.
Mercedes, on the other hand, closes this ranking (in the absence of data relating to the 2019 Haas intermediates) which sees in the W12 the car that suffered the most in the first section. It is four tenths behind the W10, even if in the central sector it cannot be said that it performed well, losing just over two tenths. In the final secetor the gap is 1.3 seconds for a total of almost 2 seconds lost, in addition to the pole position which passed from the hands of Hamilton to that of Verstappen.
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