Five races into the Formula 1 season, and Oscar Piastri leads Lando Norris by 10 points, with Max Verstappen a further two behind. It looks like a three-way fight between the two McLaren men and the defending champion in the Red Bull.

With that in mind, we sift through the data from the initial batch of races to decipher the best-performing driver of the three contenders, and also try to discover who has the best chance of winning the drivers’ title.

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri of Australia holds trophy after winning the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix in Sakhir.Credit: AP

Let’s look at their performances over qualifying and races and consider how that might play out if these trends continue.

The current era of F1 cars was supposed to reduce the negative effect dirty (turbulent) air has on overtaking. Unfortunately, what started fairly well in 2022 has regressed. Qualifying is again even more critical for deciding a race. This is especially true given how small the performance gaps are throughout the field.

The truest measure of any driver is how a driver fares against his teammate. That is no more exposed than over one flying lap. Currently, Piastri leads Norris 4-2 from five main and one sprint qualifying sessions and is on average 0.15 seconds faster than his team-mate.

Verstappen, meanwhile, has a perfect 6-0 record and was 1.4 seconds faster than Liam Lawson on average and is currently 0.7 seconds faster than Yuki Tsunoda. Clearly that is impressive, but it is not comparable to the two McLaren drivers because of the calibre of the driver in the second Red Bull.

On average, so far, the McLaren has been just over a quarter of a per cent faster than the Red Bull,........

© The Sydney Morning Herald