Winners and losers from F1's 2026 Brazilian Grand Prix
Mercedes clinching the 2026 Formula 1 constructors’ championship with its first podium-less race of the season summed this wild Brazilian Grand Prix, as an extremely mixed up grid and constantly changing weather teamed up to create plenty of entertainment.
And some came out of it all much worse than others.
Winner: Lando Norris (1st)
Lando Norris rated this as one of his best wins, and it’s hard to argue, because there were plenty of chances to get it wrong.
He lost the lead on the run to Turn 1 and was then muscled out of second by Liam Lawson into Turn 2. By the time the poleman got Lawson back into the Bico de Pato on lap six, he was over five seconds behind Kimi Antonelli and a win was doable but difficult.
His race turned on the first big call. McLaren brought Norris in for slicks a lap before Mercedes did the same with Antonelli, and that extra lap on warm tyres let Norris slash the gap and pounce once Antonelli started to slip up.
After that, he made no mistakes in conditions where Antonelli, among others, made plenty. - Scott Mitchell-Malm
Loser: Kimi Antonelli (5th)
Is it churlish to put the Mercedes pair in the Losers column on the day when Mercedes finally ended a constructors’ title drought dating back to 2021?
Maybe. But Mercedes only clinched the constructors’ title today. It effectively won that months ago. And if Ferrari hadn’t had such an abject disaster of a race, Mercedes’ party might’ve had to wait until Las Vegas.
Because the Brazilian GP itself was just sketchy for Mercedes and its new drivers’ champion - Kimi Antonelli spinning away the race lead and slithering down the field to fifth with a so-far undiagnosed problem that team boss Toto Wolff thinks was probably just a set-up or tyre pressure miscue with big consequences. An unsafe pit release penalty didn't cost him a position, but somewhat typified his day.
He ended it partying on the podium with his team, but by Antonelli 2026 standards this race itself was a low. - Matt Beer
Winner: Max Verstappen (2nd)
A podium from 21st on the grid would have been impressive enough. But by his own account, Max Verstappen did most of the race with a car that wasn’t right.
The start was his own fault. He held the clutch wrongly, was slow away, and then got stuck in the chaos of the first three corners. So there was no instant Lewis Hamilton-style charge from the back.
Once things settled down, though, the progress was rapid. Then came the switch to slicks, and with it extreme oversteer in the high-speed corners that Verstappen reckons was some kind of aero loss.
When he went back to intermediates at the end, Verstappen said the car felt night-and-day different from the first stint, which to him proved something had gone wrong. - SMM
Loser: George Russell (4th)
“I'd say on the soft tyre, we had the fastest race pace. And it's been quite a while since I've had the fastest race pace, so I would take the positives of that.”
Yeah, OK. And fourth was actually Russell’s best grand prix result since winning in Baku five rounds ago. And he beat Antonelli, which also hadn’t happened since Baku. And he’s right there were times when he was really fast. And he helped Mercedes clinch its first constructors’ championship since 2021.
So, yep, alright George, positives to take.
But the most memorable image of his Brazilian GP was still an embarrassing pit exit spin, and a painfully slow recovery from that, which at least left him in a nothing-to-lose position from which he could take the tyre gamble that got him back up the order. And on a day when Antonelli couldn’t win, Russell was never anywhere near stepping up to give Mercedes victory himself instead. - MB
Winner: Liam Lawson (7th)
This weekend has done absolutely nothing to dispel the notion that Liam Lawson being left without an F1 seat next year would be a travesty.
He was a clear couple of steps ahead of his Racing Bulls team-mate Arvid Lindblad all weekend and ran as high as second on the opening lap.
The track quickly drying denied him a chance of staying there, but he still beat the Ferraris once Charles Leclerc's penalty was applied and won the midfield fight for the fifth straight weekend.
His 2026 points total alone is comfortably better than Alpine's, as Racing Bulls’ nearest rival suffered its fifth point-less weekend in six.
It means Racing Bulls is even closer to clinching a historic fifth-place finish in the constructors’ championship, something Red Bull’s second team has long targeted since the Franz Tost Toro Rosso days.
And yet it (or rather Red Bull) might ditch the man who has made a sizeable contribution to it finally doing so. - Josh Suttill
Loser: Ferrari (8th & 9th)
Ferrari is a winner only in so much that its drivers Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton managed to work reasonably well together in Brazil.
Their cooperation only secured the team minor points, a 2026-worst score of just six once Leclerc was demoted back behind Lawson.
It couldn’t all be explained by Leclerc and Hamilton’s grid penalties either. Verstappen came from behind them both to second, as both Ferraris took turns at struggling massively and both had turns at looking insanely quick.
The problem was those insanely quick periods were too fleeting, and they’d both lost too much time in the slower periods.
Hamilton wasn’t helped by his late spin either and the stewards taking back the seventh place Leclerc wrestled from Lawson made things even worse. - JS
Winner: Isack Hadjar (3rd)
Isack Hadjar’s third podium for Red Bull came from his biggest test yet.
It wasn’t plain sailing. In the middle of the first stint on intermediates, he struggled with grip, and finishing that close to team-mate Verstappen is obviously mitigated by the fact Verstappen started at the back of the grid.
But this was a very tidy race with strong pace on slicks and some incisive moves, especially the pass he teed up on Antonelli to move into the podium places. - SMM
Loser: Rafa Camara (20th)
Though it feels harsh to count him in this list given there could hardly be tougher conditions to make your F1 debut in, Rafael Camara’s first grand prix was one to learn from rather than one to remember.
He finished 20th and last of the classified runners, two laps down, had enough lap times deleted for track limits that he earned a black-and-white flag - one of which was for going off at Turn 4 immediately after leaving the pits.
The conditions were extremely difficult, and Haas as a whole had a bad day, but it was a weak debut that undersold what the rest of his weekend had shown: an impressive Friday, and qualifying, where he was going well until the crash in Q2 that cost him a place in Q3.
“We experienced everything in just one race, so it was not easy to stay on track,” said Camara, who admitted there were “some mistakes that I was not really expecting” to make. - SMM
Winner: Nico Hulkenberg (10th)
Finishing 10th after starting fourth might seem like a race not worthy of the winners’ column, especially considering fellow second row starter Lawson managed to split the Ferraris, but Hulkenberg battled hard and held on better than many of his other midfield rivals did.
Ollie Bearman was only two places further back on the grid in his Haas, yet endured an awful race of regression to 17th thanks chiefly to a 20-second pitstop.
As he put it, “when you’re stationary for 20 seconds in the pitlane, it’s game over.”
Alex Albon similarly regressed from a favourable top-10 start, saying his Williams “destroyed the inter” and just fell back on pure pace as the track dried out.
Hulkenberg copped a penalty for cutting the track while battling Franco Colapinto’s uncompromising Alpine, but such was the woe suffered by his many midfield rivals it made no difference to Hulkenberg’s finishing position.
Only one solitary point bagged in the end, but it could prove a valuable one in Audi’s tight fight with Haas for seventh in the constructors’ championship, which Bearman feels Haas is now "giving away". - Ben Anderson
Loser: Valtteri Bottas (DNS)
Failing to start a grand prix because a cross-threaded wheelnut discovered on the grid has jammed a wheel on and desperate attempts to remove it made no difference is a sad and embarrassing situation.
That happening to a driver who’s fighting to convince his team not to drop him is another few steps worse. - MB
