Piastri leads Norris 6-15 in qualifying head-to-heads as 2026 F1 season reaches Bahrain in Malaysia

Oscar Piastri has firmly established himself as McLaren’s qualifying benchmark in 2026, leading teammate Lando Norris 15-6 in team-mate head-to-heads through the Bahrain Grand Prix — the race held at Malaysia’s Sepang circuit. Stripped of sprint qualifying sessions, Piastri’s advantage narrows to 10-6, but the trend remains consistent across a long season.

At Mercedes, rookie Kimi Antonelli has edged ahead of George Russell, leading 11-10 overall and 9-7 excluding sprints. Russell’s Azerbaijan qualifying was disrupted by a crash that left him 16th in Q1, a result that skewed the running tally significantly in Antonelli’s favour.

At Red Bull, Max Verstappen has dominated his head-to-head with Isack Hadjar, leading 13-4 overall and 9-4 without sprints. Hadjar failed to set a lap time in Q1 at the Australian season opener after going off, and has rarely troubled Verstappen since. Verstappen’s own Bahrain qualifying was affected by a grid penalty, with the Dutchman classified third but 0.428 seconds off the pace in Q3.

In a brief four-race stint before his departure, Verstappen also went 4-0 against Liam Lawson — 3-0 excluding sprints — with Lawson’s best result a sixth-place grid slot in the Netherlands.

At Ferrari, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton are locked at 11-10 overall and 8-8 without sprints, making theirs the tightest intra-team battle of the season. Hamilton’s Monaco qualifying was compromised by a crash that left him without a representative lap time, one of several footnotes the statistics account for when assessing true pace differentials.

The head-to-head records are compiled using qualifying classification results only, meaning grid penalties applied after the session do not affect the tallies. Where a driver was unable to set a representative time due to a technical failure or on-track incident, the circumstances are noted alongside the result.