Formula 1's title race took another significant turn in the sprint race in the 2025 Brazilian Grand Prix as Oscar Piastri crashed out.
Here are our picks for the biggest winners and losers from the race, which as you'd expect kicks off with Piastri...
Loser - Oscar Piastri (DNF)
An obvious choice given he crashed out of third place in a race that his McLaren team-mate and chief title rival Lando Norris won.
Piastri will be cursing his luck for running over that Turn 3 kerb just moments after Norris, of all people, had clambered across it and thrown up loads of standing water.
This played a major role in Piastri’s misfortune, rather like deploying banana skins in a Mario Kart race (as George Russell himself observed!).
The gap is out to nine points now, but Piastri cannot dwell on that. He just has to put it out of his mind and focus on trying to take pole for the race that really counts. - Ben Anderson
Winner - Max Verstappen (4th)
Things clearly aren’t right with the RB21 at Interlagos and parc ferme’s reopening couldn’t have come soon enough.
So for Max Verstappen to gain two positions from his grid start and take fourth place while Piastri scored nothing is decent championship damage limitation.
Plus Verstappen and his race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, get bonus points for another vintage sarcastic exchange during the red flag stoppage, as Verstappen bemoaned his bouncing car's lack of grip and Lambiase tried to advise Max on some strategies to prevent him "oversteering into Turn 1 every lap".
The big question now becomes whether that opportunity for some post-sprint race set-up changes are enough for Red Bull to reduce McLaren’s advantage.
Otherwise, Verstappen will undoubtedly be a loser after GP qualifying later. - Josh Suttill
Loser - Franco Colapinto (DNF)
It’s unfortunate for Colapinto that he should suffer yet another big accident just after Alpine announced he would be retained for 2026.
Being fast, scoring points and not crashing are the three things Flavio Briatore demands and on a weekend when Pierre Gasly is showing the car is capable of being in the points, Colapinto is so far failing in his mission.
You have to wonder if Briatore will now be breathing down his neck again after another hefty crash bill and a lot of extra work created for the Alpine mechanics.
The saving grace for Colapinto this time is that two more experienced drivers suffered very similar accidents that were in part triggered by another driver dragging up water onto the Turn 3 kerb, so it's difficult to be too critical of Franco in a treacherous race of such fine margins. - Hamish Shackleton Bailey
Winner: Lando Norris (1st)
Norris had one job: to convert his sprint pole to victory, and he did exactly that. Leading all the way from lights to flag, the only time things got tough was when the soft tyres he took for the red flag restart began to give up and Kimi Antonelli's Mercedes closed in.
Although he faced a strong challenge from Antonelli near the end, Norris had just enough tyre to cover off any potential move and cruise over the line for his second F1 sprint victory in 2025.
Given the results of his championship rivals, the eight points he earned for his win may be some of the most vital of the season so far. - Eden Hannigan
Winner - Pierre Gasly (8th)
The longest point-less streak of all 10 teams is over as Pierre Gasly utilised the potential he’d shown on Friday, where double-waved yellow flags for Charles Leclerc’s spin meant he couldn’t improve enough to advance to SQ3.
Gasly moved from 13th to eighth on the grid, including a nice late-race overtake on Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin.
The best part for Gasly and Alpine is that unless other teams make big strides with post-sprint race set-up changes, it can fight for more points on Sunday - not a sentence we’ve been able to write very often about Alpine in 2025. - JS
Loser - Sauber (16th and 18th)
Brazil’s sprint race has left Sauber counting its pennies after both its drivers catapulted their cars into various walls around the Interlagos circuit.
Nico Hulkenberg, who started 10th, was the first Sauber to crash after he spun the car off the wet kerb on the exit of Turn 3. He was able to get the car back to the pits, and was lucky a red flag was called, as this gave the Sauber mechanics a chance to fix the damage. The team rushed to put a new front wing and rear wing on the car, which was finished minutes before the race restarted.
Gabriel Bortoleto suffered an even more dramatic crash after he lost control while trying to overtake Alex Albon, completely wrecking his Sauber in front of his home crowd.
The rookie was lucky not to collect Albon, who he was nowhere close enough to overtake. His team now has a monster job to repair the car for qualifying. - HSB
Winner- Charles Leclerc (5th)
A decent result for Leclerc on a track that isn’t really suiting a Ferrari that has to run low to the ground to be fast. Perhaps the lack of grip and need to stay away from the kerbs helped, relatively speaking, as undoubtedly did Piastri crashing out ahead.
To Leclerc’s credit, he made a fast start to gain some ground and also managed to battle his way past Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin, which to be fair was compromised by having to lift and coast - a pain Leclerc knows all to well given the usual limitations of his own car!
That perhaps took the shine off Alonso making a rare appearance among the sprint race points scorers, and Aston Martin’s struggles compounded by Lance Stroll slipping behind Gasly’s Alpine and out of the top eight. - BA
Winner: Kimi Antonelli (2nd)
At one point, it looked as if Antonelli was on course to take his first-ever sprint victory as he closed in on a struggling Norris in the final three laps.
Although it wasn’t meant to be on this occasion, Antonelli's Brazilian GP sprint still proved to be one of the highlights of his rookie campaign. This was a confident drive from start to finish as the rookie covered off challenges from Piastri on the first start, then Mercedes team-mate Russell on the restart.
While the red flag could have disrupted his rhythm, Antonelli kept his head down and powered his way to a maiden sprint podium.
Maybe the 19-year-old will be disappointed not to have won this time around, but this will surely give Antonelli the confidence he needs to continue a strong weekend so far. - EH
