Alonso outqualifies Vandoorne across the season

Fernando Alonso out-qualified a teammate across the season for the second time in his career as he ended up 15th on the grid for tomorrow while teammate Vandoorne qualified down in 18th place. The latter was not able to out-qualify even once in 21 races.

The last time this happened in F1 was a decade ago and it was done by Alonso himself. The Spaniard was driving for Renault in 2008 when he out-qualified then teammate, Nelson Piquet Jr., for 18 races.

The record is not unheard of in F1 as the likes of Michael Schumacher and Jos Verstappen have done it before. In fact, Schumacher did it three times in his early years with Benetton. The first victim was Martin Brundle who was out-qualified 16-0 in 1992, which was Schumacher’s first full season in F1.

He did it in 1993 too as he out-qualified Italian veteran, Ricardo Patrese 16-0 and Max Verstappen’s father, Jos, was the unfortunate teammate in 1994, being out-qualified 8-0. However, Verstappen would also join this list later in his career, in 1996.

His teammate at Footwork Arrows that year was Brazilian Ricardo Rosset, who the Dutchman out-qualified 16-0. Other notable drivers to do it were Mark Webber, who out-qualified Malaysian Alex Yoong 15-0 in 2002, while driving for Minardi in his debut season in F1.

Mika Hakkinen has also etched his name in this list as current Sky Sports pundit, Martin Brundle suffered the humiliation for a second time at McLaren in 1994 from the Finnish champion.

The other world champions to achieve this feat were Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Nelson Piquet, Niki Lauda, Mario Andretti, James Hunt, Alan Jones and Keke Rosberg. Fan favourites, Gerhard Berger and Jean Alesi have also humiliated their respective teammates.

The stat may slightly vindicate McLaren’s position to drop Vandoorne for next season, though many have come out in support of the Belgian, blaming the team instead for making him a scapegoat.