What is really the fastest car of the 2026 season? The average gaps recorded in F1 qualifying after eleven Grands Prix outline a particularly clear hierarchy.
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Eleven races now provide a sufficiently large sample to identify strong trends. By calculating, for each team, the average gap to the best time of each weekend, a first conclusion emerges: Mercedes remains the absolute benchmark. But the numbers mainly show how close Ferrari, McLaren, and Red Bull remain behind… and how much the gap has widened with the rest of the field.
Ferrari appears as its closest rival. The Scuderia has not necessarily given the impression of having the second fastest car. However, by isolating only pure performance in F1 qualifying, it shows an average advantage over the rest of the chasers:
Ferrari: +0.288 s
McLaren: +0.387 s
Red Bull: +0.445 s
Only 157 thousandths separate Ferrari from Red Bull. A gap small enough that temperature, tire management, or a perfect lap can change the order from one Grand Prix to another.
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F1 hierarchy 2026
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The 2026 hierarchy table
To measure the scale of these data, these figures represent the average qualifying gap over a lap of a length comparable to that of Barcelona.
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| Team | Average gap / Best time | Status |
| Mercedes | +0.023 s | Absolute benchmark |
| Ferrari | +0.288 s | Solid runner-up |
| McLaren | +0.387 s | Lurking |
| Red Bull | +0.445 s | End of Top 4 |
| Racing Bulls | +1.151 s | Best of the rest |
| Alpine | +1.224 s | Chasing |
| Audi | +1.359 s | In the midfield pace |
| Haas | +1.729 s | Falling behind |
| Williams | +1.966 s | Struggling |
| Cadillac | +2.924 s | Back of the grid |
| Aston Martin | +3.254 s | Statistical disaster |
A gap of 706 thousandths: the field split in two
It is behind Red Bull that the numbers become spectacular. While barely 422 thousandths separate Mercedes from Red Bull, the fifth team, Racing Bulls, is at 1.151 seconds.
There is therefore a 706 thousandths gap between 4th and 5th place. The gap between the Top 4 and the midfield is significantly larger than that which separates the four best teams among themselves.
Behind Racing Bulls, the gaps remain tight: Alpine (+1.224 s) and Audi (+1.359 s) form a second compact group, while Haas and Williams approach the two-second delay mark.
The Aston Martin nightmare
At the very bottom of the standings, the situation is even more severe. The new Cadillac team is 2.924 seconds behind, but it is Aston Martin that brings up the rear with an average deficit of 3.254 seconds. A particularly harsh figure given the huge resources invested by the Silverstone team.
F1 2026 is not as compact as the regulations might have hoped. While F1 qualifying sessions show a leading group gathered within less than half a second, they mainly reveal the emergence of a two-speed Formula 1.
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