2019 Austrian GP: Leclerc vs Verstappen

Incredible race we saw in Spielberg a couple of days ago. Great wheel to wheel racing, and a surprising victory for a marvelous Max Verstappen. When we everyone thought that Charles had the race in the bag, Max came from the back to claim the first victory for Honda in the hybrid era. How did the two drivers compare during the race? The stats will tell us the story. Let’s take a look at the numbers.

Overall race

Note: The red and blue solid lines show an average regression based on adjacent lap times. This means that a line that is higher on the chart, means that on average, that driver was slower than his counterpart.

Max had to make his way through the field after the anti-stall system kicked in right at the beginning of the race. His first 10 laps of the race were slower than Charles’, but after that, his race pace kept getting better and better.

During his first stint, Charles had a race pace of 1:09.521, which was 210 thousands of a second faster than Max’s pace on his first stint. I am comparing stints, even if they have different number of laps depending on the driver, so consider that the same delta over a longer period of time, or laps, would yield a larger total delta at the end.

After Max changed tires in lap 31, he was blazing fast. His second stint was almost half a second faster than Charles’ stint with the hard compound. By the time he caught up to him, it was only a matter of when he was going to make the final overtake.

Delta per lap in common

Over the course of the race, Charles Leclerc was faster than Max on 23 laps, while the Dutchman was faster than his counterpart on 43 laps. Before Leclerc stopped for new tires in lap 22, he was faster than Max on 10 laps, but it was clear by then that Verstappen was reversing the trend. From laps 11 to 21, Max outpaced Leclerc on 10 of those laps.

After Verstappen pit stop, he outpaced Leclerc on 31 out of 39 laps. During this period of time, Max was on average 4 tenths faster than Leclerc per lap. This is another way of saying that over 39 laps, Max was 15.6 seconds faster than Charles.

Average race pace & race pace distribution

Note: The black vertical lines show the 25th, 50th and 75th quartiles, while the red line shows the 10th percent quartile.

Nothing should be taken away from Charles’ fantastic race. The Monegasque was incredibly consistent, and showed that he is one of the great young talents in F1. Unfortunately for him, Verstappen and Red Bull were supreme on Sunday.

The right “tail” that you see on the right side of Max’s data, shows the laps in which the Dutchman was slower than the slowest laps done by Leclerc. All of these were done at the beginning of the race, when Max got caught up in the traffic and had to make his way through.

The red line shows the 10th percentile for each driver, meaning that the laps shown on the left side of that line, were the 10% fastest laps done by that particular driver. As you can see, Charles’ fastest lap, a 1:07.993, was not even fast enough to be among Max’s fastest 10 laps. In fact, Max did 11 laps that were faster than Leclerc’s fastest lap.

By the end of the race, Max Verstappen took home the fastest lap of the race, a 1:07.474, done in lap 60. This particular lap time, was 0.519 seconds faster than Leclerc’s fastest lap of the race.

Final remarks

Charles Leclerc had a great weekend in Austria. He was undoubtedly disappointed by losing the lead at the end of the race, but it was clear for everyone that he left nothing on the table during that afternoon.

Max Verstappen had a race to remember. His only blemish was a poor start, one that, however, ended up having no consequences on the final result. The fact that after Max Verstappen pitted, he was faster than Charles by 4 tenths of a second per lap, tells you how strong his race was.

People will wonder if Ferrari made the wrong call with the soft tire strategy, and that is something that I will let you decide. Hopefully this data will help you to make your own conclusion.

If you enjoyed this analysis, please share it with your friends, and let me know what you think in the comments below.