Thirteen of the 20 drivers lining up on the Formula 1 grid in 2024 have set pole position for an F1 grand prix.
Lewis Hamilton tops the list for the most pole positions of any individual driver in F1 history, and has almost as many to his name as the other 12 drivers on this list combined!
Here we detail how many pole positions each 2024 F1 driver has and where they rank on F1's all-time list.
In 2021, pole position for three of the grands prix that year were awarded to the winner of the Saturday sprint race, rather than the driver who set fastest time in the Friday qualifying session, and our numbers reflect this anomaly.
Under the traditional system, Hamilton would gain two pole positions and Max Verstappen would lose two, while Valtteri Bottas would gain one (for qualifying fastest in Italy before taking a grid penalty) but also lose one (to Hamilton in Brazil).
LEWIS HAMILTON - 104 POLES
#1 all-time
Hamilton broke Michael Schumacher's long-standing pole position record at the 2017 Italian Grand Prix, where Hamilton took his 69th F1 pole.
He's since gone on to set 35 more, so is by far F1's most successful qualifier.
Certainly, Mercedes' domination of F1's hybrid-engined era has helped, with Hamilton racking up 71 of his poles between 2014 and 2021.
He's only had one other since the end of that period, coming at the 2023 Hungarian GP where he beat Verstappen to the fastest time by just 0.003 seconds.
MAX VERSTAPPEN - 37 POLES
#5 all-time
Verstappen claiming pole position for the first five races of F1 2024 and counting has lifted him past Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and Jim Clark to sit fifth on the all-time list.
But he has a long way to go to reach the next rung on the ladder - 20 to match four-time champion Sebastian Vettel, who sits fourth in that ranking.
Although Adrian Newey and his technical team deliberately designed the 2022 and 2023 ground-effect Red Bulls to be better race cars than qualifiers - and the 2024 Red Bull looks to be the same way - Verstappen has taken 23 of his pole positions in this era.
CHARLES LECLERC - 23 POLES
#14 all-time
Charles Leclerc has set more pole positions than any F1 driver without a world championship to their name, his most recent coming after a typically brilliant lap at the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Leclerc deservedly holds a reputation for being perhaps the fastest driver in F1 right now over a single lap. If the car is set to his liking and not limited by understeer, Leclerc is capable of devastating qualifying performances that few, if any, can match.
What isn't deserved is his reputation in some corners of the Internet for being a 'choker' - on account of having only five race victories to his name so far.
That ratio has more to do with Ferrari's underwhelming cars, and Leclerc's overachievement in them in qualifying, than it does Leclerc's race-day mentality.
FERNANDO ALONSO - 22 POLES
#15 all-time
Fernando Alonso isn't renowned as a qualifying specialist. Even in his championship-winning F1 seasons (2005-06) he never scored more than six poles in each of them.
His most recent came well over a decade ago - at the 2012 German Grand Prix for Ferrari. Since then, Alonso has competed in 192 grands prix - more than half his career total - without setting a pole position.
He's come close a few times, particularly so at the 2023 Monaco GP for Aston Martin - where Alonso was just 0.084s slower than Verstappen in Q3.
Even at 42 years of age, Alonso is more than capable of adding to his tally in 2024 if Aston Martin's F1 car is fast enough.
VALTTERI BOTTAS - 20 POLES
#17 all-time
Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of the pole positions Valtteri Bottas has taken so far in F1 came during his five-season stint with Mercedes from 2017-2021.
Mexico of that year was the last time he set the outright fastest time in an F1 qualifying session, and his chances of adding to that tally are pretty slim now he's racing for the lower-midfield Stake team formerly known as Alfa Romeo/Sauber.
Hamilton used to talk up Bottas over one lap, but he scored nine fewer poles than Nico Rosberg did while Mercedes team-mate to Hamilton, and with one extra season alongside Lewis than Rosberg managed, but no doubt qualifying is one of the stronger elements of Bottas's game.
CARLOS SAINZ - 5 POLES
#52 all-time
Carlos Sainz is in the difficult position of being Leclerc's team-mate, so whenever the Ferrari is fast enough to set pole position it will usually be Leclerc who is doing so.
Leclerc has a natural feel for the limit of the tyres that Sainz isn't quite able to match, but Sainz is plenty close enough to Leclerc's level that when Leclerc has an off-day, or is not comfortable with the prevailing car balance, Sainz can absolutely get the job done.
His two most recent poles - Singapore 2023 and Italy 2023 - are great examples of Sainz building momentum through practice to eventually win tight battles for pole where the top three drivers were all covered by less than a tenth of a second.
DANIEL RICCIARDO - 3 POLES
#64 all-time
Daniel Ricciardo hasn't claimed a pole position in F1 since he left Red Bull at the end of 2018 - his last coming in Mexico, where he later produced that stunning cameo for AlphaTauri in 2023.
Ricciardo's F1 peak came during Red Bull's least successful period of F1's hybrid era, so his pole record doesn't really do justice to how and good and fast he was in that era.
Ricciardo is a smooth driver who loves to commit entry speed, so if the car underneath him offers a predictable balance and a decent amount of rear stability he can be devastatingly quick.
SERGIO PEREZ - 3 POLES
#65 all-time
All of Sergio Perez's pole positions have come in 2022 and 2023, as Red Bull has ultimately twice produced the best F1 car on the grid.
The two Perez claimed in 2023 required an assist from Verstappen, who failed to set a time in Q3 in Miami before Leclerc crashed and stopped the session, while in Saudi Arabia Verstappen suffered a driveshaft failure in Q2 that prevented him from competing for pole there.
But Perez's maiden pole - in Saudi Arabia 2022 - was entirely genuine. He came out on top in a four-way battle with Verstappen and the Ferrari drivers.
This probably ranks as the best qualifying performance of his entire F1 career so far.
NICO HULKENBERG - 1 POLE
#101 all-time
Nico Hulkenberg is the first of five 'one-hit-wonders' on this list, claiming the sole pole position of his F1 career during his 2010 rookie season with Williams.
Hulkenberg was one of the most highly-rated talents in the junior categories before Williams promoted him to F1 as team-mate to Brazilian veteran Rubens Barrichello.
By the second half of the season, Hulkenberg had overtaken the 11-time race winner to become Williams' quickest driver.
Hulkenberg's pole came at Interlagos - he's always been especially handy around that track - in mixed conditions, but was no fluke.
On slicks on a damp circuit, Hulkenberg actually set two laps good enough to beat the Red Bulls and impressively finished the session over a second clear of both Vettel and Mark Webber.
LANCE STROLL - 1 POLE
#103 all-time
The first, and so far only, pole position of Lance Stroll's F1 career came during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season - at the Turkish Grand Prix.
The track was resurfaced ahead of F1's first visit to Istanbul since 2011, and the extraordinary lack of grip in difficult conditions played havoc with everyone.
Stroll came good in a topsy-turvy Q3 session to bag pole, but faded to ninth in a race that Racing Point team-mate Perez finished second to Hamilton in.
Stroll is capable of flashes of brilliance such as this. During his rookie F1 season with Williams in 2017, Stroll qualified fourth at Monza in the wet - only just behind the Red Bulls of Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo, and a whopping 1.2s quicker than team-mate Felipe Massa.
LANDO NORRIS - 1 POLE
#104 all-time
Norris surely won't stay stuck on a solitary pole position - especially if McLaren continues its upward trajectory.
That pole came in the wet in what, for now, remains the final Russian Grand Prix, in 2021, a race Norris came within one botched tyre call of winning.
He's come close to pole on a couple of other occasions too - most notably the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, where he crashed heavily at Eau Rouge after lapping fastest of all in Q1 and Q2 in the wet.
Norris has been guilty of making a few too many qualifying errors in his F1 career so far, though admittedly in tricky-to-drive McLarens.
He does have two sprint race poles to his name, too - Brazil 2023 and China 2024 - but that doesn't count!
GEORGE RUSSELL - 1 POLE
#105 all-time
George Russell's qualifying day of days came at the 2022 Hungarian Grand Prix, where he narrowly beat Sainz to pole in a session Lewis Hamilton could only manage the seventh-fastest time in.
The Mercedes F1 cars Russell has raced full-time thus far haven't been anywhere near good enough for him to show the best of himself consistently, but before taking over from Valtteri Bottas at Mercedes, Russell regularly flattered Williams with some incredible top-10 qualifying laps.
He also almost set pole on his Mercedes debut, subbing for Hamilton at the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix, where Russell qualified just 0.026s slower than Bottas.
KEVIN MAGNUSSEN - 1 POLE
#106 all-time
A single pole position was just as unlikely as Hulkenberg's for Nico's current Haas team-mate Kevin Magnussen, who similarly achieved his best-ever qualifying result at the Brazilian Grand Prix (in 2022) for an un-fancied team.
This was another session of mixed weather, where being on track at the right moment was crucial. Haas put Magnussen at the front of the pit-exit queue and so he enjoyed the best of the circuit before rain curtailed the session.
But take nothing away from Magnussen, who was top-seven fast in Q1 and Q2 as well.
Not the most rounded of drivers, but he is someone who's always been capable of a special performance when all is right in his world.
Oscar Piastri, Pierre Gasly, Esteban Ocon, Alex Albon, Yuki Tsunoda, Zhou Guanyu, Logan Sargeant - 0 poles.
