What Makes a Fair Formula 1 Teammate Comparison? Hamilton and Russell, 2022–24

At a glance
Across 68 Grands Prix at Mercedes, Hamilton and Russell split qualifying 29–39; their Sunday head-to-head was 28–29 across 57 races with two numeric classifications. The 11 other rounds stay outside that paired race count.

• Qualifying29–3968 Grand Prix sessions
• Paired Sunday results28–2957 numeric-classification pairs
• Grand Prix points657–645Hamilton +12; Sundays only
• Title points697–6952022–24 combined; includes sprints

A teammate comparison can control for one large difference: both drivers use the same team’s cars. It cannot make every race a clean experiment. Reliability, contact, penalties, changing car performance and format all matter, so a useful comparison separates session types and makes every denominator visible. Lewis Hamilton and George Russell’s three Mercedes seasons show why one head-to-head score is not a complete verdict.

Keep qualifying, Sunday races and sprints separate

Across 2022–24, the pair contested 68 Grand Prix qualifying sessions. Hamilton qualified ahead 29 times and Russell 39. This counts final Grand Prix qualifying order; it does not compare lap-time margins or sprint qualifying. A 19–5 Russell edge in 2024 followed a 13–9 Hamilton edge in 2022 and an 11–11 tie in 2023, so the aggregate hides a clear season-to-season shift.

Sunday race head-to-head uses a smaller sample: only races where both drivers had a numeric final classification position. Hamilton had 28 ahead-of-teammate results to Russell’s 29 across 57 paired classifications. Of 68 held Grands Prix, 11 lack a numeric result for at least one driver; these rounds are listed below rather than counted as automatic wins for the classified driver. The 2023 denominator is 17 paired races out of 22, not 17 of 24: Imola was cancelled and is not among the 22 races held.

Points tell a related but different story. Summing Sunday Grand Prix points, Hamilton scored 657 to Russell’s 645 over three years. The championships included sprint points too: Hamilton’s combined total was 697 and Russell’s 695. Sprint points contributed 40 and 50 respectively. In 2022, for example, Sunday points were 233–262, while sprint points added 7–13; the official final totals were 240–275. The chart shows Hamilton’s Sunday points for each season.

Paired results do not erase reliability

The paired race count is useful precisely because it excludes unmatched results, but it also discards real parts of a season. Hamilton scored nine Grand Prix podiums to Russell’s eight in 2022, while Russell took the team’s only Sunday win. In 2023, with a 12–5 paired-result edge, Hamilton also scored six podiums to Russell’s two. In 2024, Russell led the paired count 13–7, yet both won twice and Hamilton had five podiums to Russell’s four. The paired count, wins, podiums and points answer different questions.

Classification does not explain why a driver was unclassified. The official result table below identifies the 11 races omitted from direct race comparison, but it does not assign causes. Russell’s 2024 Belgium result was later disqualified, for example; a numeric classification-only method excludes that race. Conversely, counting the classified teammate as the “winner” would mix driving performance with reliability and post-race decisions. Always retain the excluded rows and read the official documents.

Rounds without a paired numeric classification

Method and sources

The period is the 68 Grands Prix held in 2022, 2023 and 2024; all three seasons had sprint weekends, but qualifying head-to-head, wins, podiums and Sunday points here use Grand Prix sessions only. A lower numeric qualifying or finishing position is ahead. Race H2H includes only paired numeric final positions. The source ledger contains both drivers’ event-level qualifying and race classifications and official URLs; all annual H2H, points and podium totals were independently recounted against the 2022, 2023, and 2024 Formula 1 result archives and final drivers’ standings. Summed points reflect each season’s rules and should not be treated as equal-value measures across seasons. Paired results reduce unmatched-classification bias but do not control for setup, strategy, car development, incidents or the reason for a missing classification. Read the Teammate Comparisons hub, Alonso’s profile beyond wins, and Hamilton’s 2024 teammate results.