As the all-McLaren Formula 1 title fight continued on the Dutch Grand Prix’s front row, there were plenty of surprises and disappointments further back on the Zandvoort grid.
Here’s our pick of the standout flops and stars.
Loser - Lance Stroll (20th)
Lance Stroll looked to have bounced back nicely from his Friday practice shunt, but followed it up with a worse-if-less-severe crash, all but writing off a promising weekend for his side of the garage.
Clipping the grass on entry into the Kumho corner, which pitched him into an instant spin and thumped his Aston Martin against the barriers, was acknowledged by Stroll as a "very frustrating" bit of "misjudgment" that "sucks for everyone".
Where he would've ended up otherwise is a bit of conjecture, especially as the intact Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso didn't quite live up to its practice billing either, but Alonso is in a position to score from 10th and sounds confident of doing so, while Stroll will need a big twist or two to salvage the weekend. - Matt Beer
Winner - Isack Hadjar (4th)
What's most impressive, to me, about this Hadjar performance is how it's arguably not even that much of a highlight - 0.292s up on Liam Lawson is just a tenth over their season average gap, so arguably Hadjar has had more emphatic qualifying efforts than this. In any case, fourth place on the grid this time means he'll get more of the attention he's cumulatively earned.
His every result in the coming weeks will also be viewed through the prism of a Red Bull 2026 seat - the current occupant of which, Yuki Tsunoda, was a baffled 12th, saying that "honestly I didn't have any mistakes" and that it was a surprise not to see that reflected in the final laptime.
Whether that's a seat battle Hadjar should particularly want to win is besides the point. He's certainly doing his reputation no harm, and that's never a bad thing. - Valentin Khorounzhiy
Loser - Alex Albon (15th)
The position difference is pretty stark between Alex Albon and ninth-placed Williams team-mate Carlos Sainz, and Albon probably knew it would be when he vented on team radio - "You've got to be ****ing kidding me!" and "Why do we do it to ourselves?"
It was all about the out-lap, Albon explained afterwards. He spent too long in the pit exit queue, then was slowed on his out-lap by the need to let those already pushing for a time through, so went "maybe 20-25s slower than my normal out-lap". The result was tyres unprepared at the start, the worst first sector of his qualifying and an uncompetitive lap.
Williams is particularly sensitive to this, Albon says. And it can sound like an excuse, but team-mate Sainz acknowledged "I've never had it before in my career" that a car is as out-lap-sensitive as the FW47.
"This is why you sometimes see me or Alex P19 in Q1. Two drivers who are normally very closely matched on track, normally within a tenth of each other - and then suddenly you see one guy P3 and the other guy in Q1 and vice versa."
It seems it was just Albon's turn to draw the short straw today. - VK
Winner - Oscar Piastri (1st)
This looks very much like an Oscar Piastri pole snatched from Lando Norris rather than a Norris pole blown. Because it has followed a theme of this season whereby Piastri's able to chip away at a deficit to Norris and turn the tables on him by Q3.
On Friday, Piastri was bleeding time to Norris from the end of sector one onwards. But as is so often the case he cashed in on some time to reflect and study his deficit, and was within a tenth of a second of Norris going into the session that counted.
To then simply be faster, and thread the lap together, even by a tiny margin, is a testament to his work and execution.
And the fact it has happened at another Norris stronghold - a venue where he battered Piastri last year - is also significant. There don't seem to be any remaining 'Norris tracks' and at this rate, these Saturday wins are going to be key for Piastri in the championship. - Scott Mitchell-Malm
Loser - Nico Hulkenberg (17th)
Nico Hulkenberg didn't seem too disheartened to miss out on a Q2 spot, reasoning that he had thrown three sets of tyres at it and didn't improve on the third, so there was "not really" that much more laptime on the table.
"I think it's two corners, Turn 3 and Turn 13, seemed like a trend to lose there, couldn't kind of figure it out and clean that up and that's all it takes, really, here."
Indeed, dropping 0.158s to Gabriel Bortoleto was no huge disaster, and it's not like Bortoleto then went on to Q3, but the trend between them has to be alarming at this point, especially as there were some signs during the weekend that Hulkenberg might buck it here.
Instead, a fifth straight head-to-head defeat in qualifying - sixth if you count sprint qualifying, by an average margin of 0.341s. It's a bit of a funk. - VK
Winner - Max Verstappen (3rd)
‘Best of the rest’ is not really what the Zandvoort crowd or Max Verstappen are here for at F1’s penultimate Dutch GP for the time being. But in the context of how miserable Hungary was just before the break and how tough to beat the McLarens are on a circuit of this nature, third feels like a genuinely justified ‘as good as pole’ cliche.
A better middle sector than anyone else was an interesting little hint of what Verstappen might be able to force out of this car. He shouldn’t have a shot at another home win on merit, but he might through improvisation and sheer willpower. - MB
Loser - Haas (18th and 19th)
There was a lot of laptime fluctuation between Ollie Bearman and Esteban Ocon through not just the weekend but individual runs in Q1, but the end result was more or less the same for both - as was the explanation.
Both drivers said the team has just not found a way to consistently coax peak performance out of the C4 soft this weekend, with Bearman - who was very fast on the hard C2 in practice - going as far as to say he could've done "the same qualifying" with the hard, and Ocon (who also did rue a mistake at Turn 11) describing it as an issue "we need to tackle hard".
In the end, the VF-25 is surely not the worst car here yet it faces another massively uphill battle to salvage anything out of the weekend. - VK
Winner - Kimi Antonelli (11th)
On face value, declaring a Mercedes driver eliminated in Q2 a winner seems odd, and extremely generous.
But Antonelli was just a whisker away from getting into Q3 with team-mate George Russell, who he was within two tenths of in both Q1 and Q2.
This was not only Antonelli's most competitive performance versus Russell since Miami in May, it came after Antonelli looked lost in practice following his costly, early mistake in FP1 when he slid into the gravel.
To recover so emphatically, with a big step in qualifying, showed a good combination of speed and resilience that indicates something greater than the qualifying result looks on paper. - SMM
