2019 F1 Season: Max vs Gasly – Final overview

Most F1 fans know by now that Pierre Gasly has been demoted from Red Bull. Did he do enough to avoid this ending, or was this just a deserved consequence? The stats will tell us the story, so let’s take a look at the numbers.

Points overview

When it comes to points, arguably the most important metric in Formula 1, Pierre was well behind his teammate, Max Verstappen.

Pierre struggled badly over the season, not being able to get a single podium in 12 races. The Frenchman managed a 6th and 5th place position in Spain and Monaco, giving hope that he was on the right track, but after that, everything came down. Since then, he only scored 31 points, while Max managed to get a whooping 103 points.

At the end, Pierre only obtained 26% of the points obtained by Red Bull over the season so far. If he had had better results, perhaps Red Bull would be in second place in the Constructors Championship right now.

Quali positions overview

Perhaps Gasly weakest point over the season was his qualifying performance. In 12 races, Pierre only managed to outqualify Max in a single race, Canada. While it is true that his performances improved during the season, they were still mediocre, especially after seeing the potential that the Red Bull car has this season.

Pierre failed to get into Q3 on 3 occasions, and his best qualifying position was a 4th place obtained in Great Britain. For comparison, Max only failed to get into Q3 on one occasion, and that failure was caused by a red flag at the end of the session.

Overall, Max has had much better qualifying performances, qualifying on average in the 2nd row of the race, an having a season worst starting position of 11th place in Canada. Gasly is qualifying on average in 8th place, which is clearly not a good enough position for a team of Red Bull’s calibre.

Quali overview

In direct one to one battles, meaning qualifying sessions where both drivers participated, Gasly finished his season at Red Bull 2 to 10. The Frenchman only managed to defeat Max in Q1 in Azerbaijan, and in Q2 in Canada. In the first race, Gasly was unable to take part in Q2, while in the second one, Max was unable to take part in Q3, so we were unable to see the final results of their battle due to unexpected circumstances.

In Q3 sessions, Pierre had no response to Max’s speed. The minimum difference between both drivers was seen in Great Britain, where Max defeated Gasly by 0.313 seconds, while the maximum difference was seen in Hungary (0.878 seconds). The average difference in Q3 between the Red Bull drivers was an incredible 0.602 seconds.

Over 12 races, Max outpaced Pierre by an average of 0.365 seconds on direct head to head battles.

Race positions overview

The mean race position of both drivers should tell you the whole story of their season so far. Pierre Gasly finished in 8th place on average (8.5 technically), while Max is finishing just a little bit outside of the podium, in 3.33th place.

Max has stepped on the podium 5 times this season already, and has taken victories in Austria and Germany. As mentioned before, Gasly did not manage to step on the podium with the Austrian team, and had to settle for a season’s best 4th place with the team.

Final remarks

It is never nice to see a driver getting demoted. Formula 1 is such a demanding sport that it is rare to get time in order to adapt to a new team. Having said that, Gasly had half of the season in order to get things straight, and he never managed to get the performance that was expected of him.

The next article will be about the battle between Alex Albon and Daniil Kvyat, so come back soon in order to check that analysis.

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