Beyond the obvious Lando Norris pole and Max Verstappen's Q1 exit, there was plenty happening in a mixed-up qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix.
Here are our winners and losers from a day which feels pivotal in the championship fight and will almost certainly be remembered for a diverse range of triumphs and failures, even by Formula 1's standards.
Loser - Max Verstappen (16th)
Max Verstappen’s first Q1 exit in four years couldn’t be worse timed for his unlikely 2025 title bid.
Should he fail to significantly recover from 16th on the grid on Sunday and a McLaren wins, Verstappen’s title dream will be all but over, given there are only three races left.
In fact, Verstappen’s already saying “you can forget about it” as far as his title hopes are concerned.
Of course, he started down in 17th last year and won, but that was in a wet race and anyway Red Bull looks totally lost here this year.
If you watched Verstappen’s qualifying laps onboard, you’ll visibly see the lack of grip he has behind the wheel. That doesn’t look like a car capable of fighting its way back anywhere near the podium places.
Verstappen said he ”doesn’t understand how it can be this bad”.
So, unless Red Bull can find the answer overnight - and take a pitlane start to make further set-up changes - Interlagos is going to deliver a potentially devastating blow to Verstappen’s title hopes.
And in the other Red Bull, Yuki Tsunoda was last of all the cars to set a time, in 19th. - Josh Suttill
Winner - Lando Norris (1st)
It’s nothing personal, but for a lot of this year I’ve felt Oscar Piastri has been the strongest driver in the title fight, but Lando Norris has proven he deserves to be in the excellent position he’s in now with his recent run of form.
Basically from Zandvoort onwards, he’s unquestionably been the best driver in this fight, and here in Interlagos he’s just had access to another level his team-mate Oscar Piastri could only dream of.
Even with the added pressure of a Q3, Turn 1 lock-up, which meant he went into the final runs languishing at the foot of the timesheet, Norris wasn't ruffled - and he absorbed the pressure as if it simply weren’t there to take a 15th career F1 pole.
With Verstappen declaring his title chances over and Piastri on a downward spiral that shows little sign of a U-turn, this weekend has all the hallmarks of the kind of weekend that really seals a championship.
It’s too early for that talk, but it feels like a pivotal moment. - Jack Benyon
Winner - Racing Bulls (5th and 7th)
Having gone three weekends without a point, Friday and the sprint race on Saturday morning did nothing to suggest Racing Bulls wouldn’t extend that streak to four in a row on Sunday.
But it clearly found some more performance ahead of grand prix qualifying with Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson fifth and seventh, far ahead of its Q1-exiting sister Red Bull team and, more importantly, in front of all of its rivals in that tense midfield fight.
Lawson felt a Turn 1 slide cost him an even better position while Hadjar urged the team to “be smart” on Sunday to make the most of a “big opportunity” to take back control of the four-team fight for sixth place, which it currently leads on a count back. - JS
Loser - Oscar Piastri (4th)
This looked like being a decent recovery after slipping on that Norris banana skin in the sprint race, but Piastri’s provisional pole after the first runs in Q3 turned into an underwhelming fourth on the grid after an underwhelming final lap.
Piastri called it “a bit of a bizarre session” with “the soft tyre just not working for some reason” and a “quite weird” lack of lap time progression through the segments.
Piastri’s Q3 lap was 0.051s slower than his Q2 effort, but even a repeat wouldn’t have improved his final grid position. The silver lining is he wasn’t alone in this, or in finding the soft tyre difficult to work with.
He seems to think this isn’t a repeat of what happened in Austin and Mexico, but a track washed clean by overnight rain, plus a soft tyre not offering the expected high grip, does sound like the sort of recent slippy-slidey phenomenon that McLaren thinks suits Norris and not Piastri, even if it's at the opposite end of the temperature spectrum.
If nine points becomes a double-figure deficit after tomorrow’s race then it will most certainly be advantage Norris in the world championship fight with Verstappen now seemingly out of the picture as a complicating factor. - Ben Anderson
Winner - Kimi Antonelli (2nd)
Antonelli built on an impressive sprint qualifying and sprint second place to take second again in qualifying for the grand prix proper.
Perhaps more impressive, though, is that he’s comfortably made his excellent team-mate George Russell look like the rookie here, and there’s not many higher compliments you could pay Antonelli. - JB
Loser - Lewis Hamilton (13th)
Another disappointing session for Hamilton this weekend after showing promise in the sprint race and early in Saturday's qualifying session.
Using a high-downforce set-up for the sprint sessions, both Ferraris changed to low-downforce wings which offered no further performance for Hamilton who blamed tyre temperatures for his elimination.
Asked if he was still motivated, Hamilton repeated a sentiment we’ve seen several times this year: “I’ve been trying all year but it just continues to go bad every weekend but I’ll get up tomorrow and try again.
"It’s another write-off weekend.” - Hamish Shackleton Bailey
Winner - Charles Leclerc (3rd)
If you had to rely on one driver to make the most out of qualifying, you would often bank on Charles Leclerc.
Once again, the Ferrari driver managed to deliver the goods on a Saturday afternoon and turned around a “difficult” weekend for Ferrari so far to earn his third consecutive top-three start, something which looked beyond its wildest imaginations after a tough Friday.
While Leclerc didn’t want to “over-exaggerate” the changes the team had made after the sprint, he admitted they had been forced to make “a big step” to bridge the gap between himself and his rivals.
Though Leclerc didn’t quite have enough to keep Norris and Antonelli at bay, third on the grid was perhaps the best he could do given the circumstances of his weekend so far.
With cautious optimism about Ferrari’s potential race pace, anything is possible for Leclerc if he makes a good start on Sunday.
Loser - George Russell (6th)
F1’s ‘Mr Saturday’ isn’t used to getting duffed up by his rookie team-mate in qualifying, but this has so far been one of those weekends - a bit like the Miami sprint weekend - where Russell just can’t quite find the grip that Antonelli can from the Pirelli tyres when it’s time to take the car to the absolute limit.
Russell was so stumped by the lack of grip he was feeling on the softs that he fitted mediums for his final run in Q3, in a desperate bid to find the pace to fight for the first two rows of the grid. It was a bold gamble that backfired.
He will probably feel a pole was within reach had his Mercedes been responding as it should, so sixth - behind not only his team-mate but Leclerc’s wayward Ferrari and Isack Hadjar’s midfield Racing Bulls - is a disappointing result for a driver who has hardly ever been outside the top five in Q3 this season. - BA
Winner - Pierre Gasly (9th)
Gasly has had little opportunity to impress this year thanks to the sheer lack of pace of the Alpine, but when given the opportunity he has often taken it with both hands.
He scored a point in the Interlagos sprint after overtaking Lance Stroll, before going on to qualify ninth for Sunday’s race.
In a very tight Q3, Gasly was only seven hundredths behind Hadjar's fifth-placed Racing Bulls.
Speaking afterwards, Gasly seemed to have no answers for the performance but was “extremely happy” that for the first time since Silverstone he managed to get into the final group in qualifying. - HSB
Loser - Ollie Bearman (8th)
While a place inside the top-10 would usually be a great result for Ollie Bearman, it feels underwhelming when compared to what might have been.
Bearman admitted the confidence and feeling in his Pirelli tyres that placed him consistently inside the top five in Q1 and Q2 “wasn’t quite there” in Q3, which resulted in him tumbling down the order by the time the chequered flag was thrown out.
He conceded that overconfidence from the first two rounds of qualifying led him to do faster outlaps, which “maybe worked against” him and led to the tyres being far too hot on his final push laps, which caused him to lose time while others gained.
While there is bound to be disappointment from a session that could have delivered much more, Bearman will still have the confidence that he can take the car to a strong points finish yet again in Sunday’s race. - EH
