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# Winners and losers from Spanish GP F1 qualifying at the Madring
- URL: https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/f1-2026-spanish-grand-prix-qualifying-winners-losers/
- Published: 2026-09-12T17:22:24.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-12T17:22:24.000Z
- Description: Fears of a Sunday procession mean it was ultra-important for F1 drivers to nail Spanish GP qualifying. Who maximised the opportunity?
- Author: The Race Team
- Tags: Formula 1, #spanish-grand-prix, #primary_homepage_feature

Just 0.011s separate first and second in the first-ever Formula 1 qualifying session at the Madring, and the first four slots on the Spanish Grand Prix grid will be occupied by drivers from four different teams too.

But considering all the fears of a Sunday procession, is this the end of the action?

And if it is, who's maximised their opportunity, and who's been found wanting?

## Loser: Oscar Piastri (7th)

Eighth in Q1, ninth in Q2...Piastri was well off the pace throughout qualifying.

He had to abort his first flying lap of Q1 and, from then on, it was a "messy" session by his reckoning.

He even called it a "pretty crap" go in Q3, as he laboured to seventh.

"That's how it goes sometimes unfortunately," he said. "It's been a bit of a better weekend, like Monza, in that I at least am...happier with what the car's doing, and today was simply just one of those sessions."

More painful will be the fact that it's expected to be hard to overtake here. And even more painful will be the fact that team-mate Lando Norris took a stunning pole position - so the pace was definitely there.

Piastri's middling run continues. **\- Samarth Kanal**

## Winner: Lando Norris (1st)

A winner not just because of the end result, but because of the manner in which it arrived - pretty much out of nowhere.

The earlier stages of qualifying suggested this would be a fight between Mercedes and Ferrari, with Max Verstappen's Red Bull maybe interloping.

Norris was fifth in Q1 but only seventh in Q2, and when Kimi Antonelli stuck his Mercedes on provisional pole with the first 1m31s lap of the weekend, having been narrowly usurped by Lewis Hamilton in the first Q3 runs, it looked at though the session was going to form.

But then came Norris, with a full-send, ultra-committed lap in his McLaren.

The last corner was untidy - team principal Andrea Stella reckoned Norris lost three tenths there - but the rest of it Stella called "a masterpiece", and what Norris reckoned was probably the best qualifying lap of his entire career was enough to snatch pole from Antonelli by a hundredth of a second.

Not totally clean from the world champion, but certainly brilliant. **\- Ben Anderson**

## Loser: George Russell (6th)

Gap to Antonelli in pace: 0.314s (not great)  
Gap to Antonelli in positions: four (also not great)

Russell seemed shake off his brush with the wall in Q1, a session he ended up topping, pretty easily and said he felt in a good place afterwards - claiming he was "about three tenths up" on his previous best midway round his final Q3 lap.

"Tried pushing hard in Turn 11, the tyres couldn't take it and then lost all the laptime thereafter," said Russell, who added it has been "really challenging" to judge how hard to lean on the tyres.

Salvaging a time loss in that three-tenth ballpark obviously would've made a difference to his grid position. But after a promising start to the weekend, qualifying was another example of Russell being a step behind at Mercedes - and barely being able to grasp at any title hopes right now. **\- Jack Cozens**

## Winner: Lewis Hamilton (4th)

Hamilton outqualified Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc by just 0.006s and did well to take a place on the second row after crashing and losing time in FP3.

The seven-time champion delivered a terse post-qualifying summary as he recalled a "pretty straightforward" session and praised "good execution" from the team.

"I'm going to have fun, that's all I can say, I’m going to have real fun, I'm not going to put too much pressure on it," he said.

Leclerc, who is using an older-spec Ferrari engine after his Monza crash, said he lost time through sector one in particular.

"I think most of the people put a new power unit or a newer-spec \[in for qualifying\], and I kind of had the same spec - and that's on me obviously for last week - so maybe I didn't do the step forward that the others did on that side," he said.

"But having said that I think the lap was quite clean. I've had a few moments here and there, which I maybe lost a little bit and when I see how close it is, it's frustrating but at the same time I feel like if you ask any drivers on the grid today, everybody probably can find something on the lap."

After their clash at the start of the Italian GP, the spotlight will again be on the Ferrari drivers at the start of this race in Madrid. **\- SK**

## Loser: Ollie Bearman (21st)

Bearman's Madrid weekend unravelled on Saturday morning when he crashed at Turn 10 [right at the end of FP3](https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/what-it-is-like-watching-f1-crash-unfold-ollie-bearman-haas/).

That crash ruled him out of qualifying and put him a provisional 21st on the grid.

Painful - as Haas team-mate Esteban Ocon was up in 13th.

"It's a shame to be standing here right now," said Bearman as he stood watching on from the sidelines in qualifying. "The car was quick. Yesterday was a tough day but we made some changes overnight and the car was feeling really good in FP3.

"Unfortunately I got caught out in Turn 10 on that final lap."

He said worn tyres and a gust of wind contributed to his mistake.

Sunday could be Bearman's ninth-straight grand prix without points, and Haas's eighth, as Audi continues to chip away at its advantage in the fight for seventh in the constructors' championship. **\- SK**

## Winner: Max Verstappen (3rd)

Another typical Red Bull turnaround from Friday, when technical director Pierre Wache indicated his team needed to work on set-up, mechanical grip, ride quality and energy deployment in order to get Verstappen into a better position.

The four-time champion was knocking on the door in FP3, just under four tenths off the pace, and come qualifying he was right in the mix: 0.170s off the pace in Q1 (where team-mate Liam Lawson lapped within a tenth of Russell's Mercedes) then fastest of all in Q2.

Verstappen was one of only three drivers to lap below 1m32s in Q3, enough to place him third on the grid and ahead of both Ferraris, a Mercedes and a McLaren, while Lawson faded to eighth.

Verstappen credited the car for finally doing what he wanted it to in the corners, but it's hard to escape the feeling there was also a bit of Max magic in play to make the difference in the end. **\- BA**

## Loser: Pierre Gasly (14th)

Baffled and bemused. That's how best to describe Gasly at the end of qualifying.

"Something doesn't add up," he lamented after qualifying 14th, an uncharacteristic seven tenths off Alpine team-mate Franco Colapinto in Q2.

He suggested he'd never felt such a switch from where the car had been - on Friday, it had left him confident of making the top 10 - to where it ended up. 

"All my traction, I'm laying rubber every corner, sideways in all the high speed," said Gasly, who tentatively concurred when The Race asked whether this might be a deeper, set-up related issue.

Asked if he expected chaos or a procession in tomorrow's race, Gasly was in no mind to look ahead. 

"At the moment I just want to get back in the office and get the answers I need." **\- JC**

## Winner: Franco Colapinto (9th)

One place worse off on the grid compared to last weekend, as Colapinto noted, but there were plenty of reasons to be happier with this performance than Q3 at Monza.

Having gathered up a lairy moment at La Monumental on his first Q2 effort, Colapinto strung together a lap he called "amazing" that he was rightly proud of to progress to Q3.

He felt this was a track more likely to be suited to Alpine's current midfield rivals Audi and Racing Bulls, an assessment that seems to have been supported by the general trend of the weekend so far - so the Alpine had little right leading the midfield, really.

That it did owed everything to Colapinto replicating (actually improving) the laptime in Q3 - a potentially significant result on a weekend where the usually dependable Gasly has looked slightly off-colour. **\- JC**

## Loser: Aston Martin (18th & 21st)

The Madring might be a temporary, street-style circuit, but it's still plenty fast enough and demanding enough on the power units to expose Honda.

Fernando Alonso had a mighty good go at escaping Q1, but he needed another 81 thousandths of a second to leapfrog the two Williamses - cars Aston Martin has recently been spooking with its impressive rate of chassis improvement.

Alonso felt he was losing "probably more than one second" because of the Honda engine.

At least he managed to participate in the session, though, unlike team-mate Lance Stroll, who was parked by problems with his fresh engine's water pressure.

Cadillac might be firmly in the rear view mirror now, but there's still clearly a massively long road to travel for Aston Martin to become even remotely as competitive as it wants to be and should be. **\- BA**