Qualifying Differentials
	Marcel Borsboom, Netherlands

Atlas F1 is going to keep an eye on the battle between team mates throughout the season by race and overall averages (again). The measurement is simple. We compare the intra-team difference in seconds on Saturday. Some may say compensation must be given in the favoritism between the number one and two seats within the team. We, on the other hand, do not grant that pardon. For better or worse, our analyses will be on the perfect world of egalitarian status in intra-team rivalry. With three qualifying sessions completed for 1999, the differentials are on a roll. Let's see which drivers deserve bragging rights. San Marino Notables Villeneuve. Not only was Jacques Villeneuve the surprise of the qualifying session in San Marino - having placed his somewhat erratic BAR on the 5th spot of the grid - he also downright crushed his teammate, with over two seconds separating him from Mika Salo. Not a nice way to welcome a friend who's helping the team out while Ricardo Zonta is injured... Oh well, some would say that Salo had his revenge on the race day to come. Barrichello. Rubens is continuing to show fantastic form, once again out-pacing his Stewart teammate Johnny Herbert by almost a full second. In the overall average, after three races, he is leading the pack with the highest gap to his teammate. Zanardi. Williams' Alex Zanardi thinks there's a demon in his car, but this weekend the demon was certainly napping during qualifying, as the Italian was finally able to qualify within a reasonable margin from his teammate, Ralf Schumacher. Not that it helped him much during race-day, but that's an altogether different story... The Benetton, Jordan and McLaren pairs all qualified within less then a tenth of second from eachother. Notably, Benetton's Giancarlo Fisichella was a mere 0.015sec ahead of teammate Alex Wurz, and in the Jordan camp things are getting tighter as can be, with Damon Hill outqualifying Heinz-Harald Frentzen at Brazil by just 0.018sec, and in San Marino Frentzen outqualifying Hill by a mere 0.095sec. All in all, the gap between teammates have vastly decreased through the first three races of this season. The average gap between teammates in Australia was 0.922sec; in Brazil it was down to 0.446sec; and while in San Marino it was up to 0.601sec, if you discount the gap between the BAR teammates - considering this is Salo's first race of the season - then the gap is down to a mere 0.361sec.