3 F1 teams that are being carried by their lead driver
F1 is a team sport. It is run by a group of people, and in a team, there are always two drivers. For a team to perform optimally, these two drivers need to be able to get the most out of the car in all circumstances. More often than not, it's not possible to have two drivers who are able to extract similar levels of performance from the car.
There are always circumstances where we have one driver who is the leader and the other who is probably a tenth or two behind him in terms of performance. There are, however, a few occurrences when even this gets thrown out the window, and what we have is one driver completely outperforming the other.
In this rare circumstance, the lead driver tends to carry the team alone, while the other driver is pretty much a burden that the team has to carry for the rest of the season.
On the current F1 grid as well, there are a few drivers who are arguably carrying the team on their shoulders. Let's take a look at which team they represent.
#1 Aston Martin
Before we begin, it's arguably the best thing that we lay down the facts. At the midway point of the season, Fernando Alonso has 149 points and is third in the championship.
His teammate Lance Stroll finds himself with 47 points and is 9th in the championship. Alonso has six podiums to his name, while his teammate has a grand total of zero podiums.
Even when the Aston Martin was a strong car, Lance Stroll never even sniffed a podium position. What's even worse is that this season there have been a handful of instances where Lance has actually finished ahead of him. Those include the race in Barcelona where Fernando Alonso showed mercy on his teammate and let him finish in front of him.
When we talk about the frontrunners, it's safe to say that Aston Martin is surely a team that is getting carried by its star driver.
#2 Williams F1
Alex Albon has not been even once outperformed by his teammate this season over a weekend. What's worse, not even once has Logan Sargeant outpaced his Williams teammate in a qualifying session.
Going further, on one side we have Albon, a driver who has three point-scoring finishes. On the other side, we have Logan, a driver who has yet to secure even a single points finish.
What makes the gap between the two teammates even more surprising is the fact that Alex Albon has 11 points to his name while Logan Sargeant, a driver that was supposed to be an upgrade to Nicholas Latifi, has not even scored once.
Willaims had gotten rid of Latifi last season and hired Sargeant to end the era of having only one driver capable of scoring points. Unfortunately, that has not happened, and the team is being carried on his shoulders by Alex Albon.
#3 Haas F1
The 2023 F1 season has been a strange one for Haas. The team came into the season after firing one underperforming driver, Mick Schumacher, and hiring Nico Hulkenberg in his place. The caveat of getting the German in the team was to have him compliment Kevin Magnussen, the more consistent driver of the 2022 F1 season.
Well, halfway through the first season, we now have a situation where Nico Hulkenberg is not only complimenting Magnussen, he's dominating him. If Haas had a car that had an equivalent pace in qualifying and the race, the 7-point gap that we see between the two drivers would have been humongous.
The 8-3 qualifying head-to-head does not tell you the true story. The real picture is the fact that there's almost half a second of a gap between the two drivers in terms of performance, and in F1, that is massive.
At the moment, while Haas is trying its best to sign an extension with Nico Hulkenberg, it will surely be weighing its options when it comes to the second seat.