Winners and losers from F1's Chinese GP qualifying
We didn't see the big performance swings from sprint qualifying to grand prix qualifying at the Chinese Grand Prix that we saw on some Formula 1 sprint weekends last year.
But there are still plenty of winners and losers from GP qualifying for us to pick out:
Loser: The Red Bull teams (8th, 9th, 14th, 15th)
Considering Isack Hadjar narrowly qualified best of the rest behind the Mercedes in Melbourne, this was a shuddering regression for Red Bull and its brand new in-house power unit.
The fact F1 has gone from one of the most energy-starved circuits to one of its most energy-rich ones, making it much easier to deploy and recharge the battery in China than it was in Australia, suggests the RBPT/Ford’s relative deployment efficiency appears less potent and thus chassis limitations are more exposed here.
Max Verstappen hasn’t looked happy all weekend, and getting beaten by an Alpine - even though Gasly has been driving it well so far - has to go down as a big loss for Red Bull when it looked capable of beating McLaren last weekend.
For sister team Racing Bulls the picture is clouded by those Gabriel Bortoleto-induced yellow flags at the end of Q2, which prevented both Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad completing what looked like being faster laps.
Enough to make the top 10, though? Probably not, considering the final deficit was anyway more than four tenths of a second. - Ben Anderson
Winner: Kimi Antonelli (1st)
We’ll never know if George Russell could have beaten him with a clearer session, but this was still the most convincing Kimi Antonelli has been in a competitive 2026 session.
When Russell stopped on track earlier in Q3, Antonelli would have known this was a huge opportunity, and he seized it with a strong banker lap.
That set him up to make a further improvement on his second flying lap to become F1’s youngest polesitter.
Antonelli will need to have a better race start than in Australia or the China sprint if he’s to have any chance of a first F1 grand prix win. And beating Russell over a grand prix distance will be tricky, but this is at least the first sign the intra-Mercedes fight in 2026 won’t be completely one-sided. - Josh Suttill
Loser: Q1
This isn't really F1's fault - it's the fault of Williams and Aston Martin-Honda (Cadillac gets some rookie grace) - but the sting has been taken out of Q1 as a competitive session by the existence of three teams clearly in the doldrums.
It is a massive credit to Carlos Sainz that he made it kind of close, but even a clearly superb effort by Sainz wasn't enough to put any of the 'midfielders' in any danger - much less threaten the kind of shock-ish Q1 eliminations we used to get every other round last year.
Not really a 'problem' to 'fix', just a bit of a shame. - Valentin Khorounzhiy
Winner: Alpine (7th and 12th)
Not only was Gasly comfortably the quickest midfield driver in grand prix qualifying, but he was even quick enough to beat both Red Bull drivers.
And Franco Colapinto was only 0.005s away from reaching Q3 for the first time with Alpine in 12th, matching his best qualifying result from Montreal last year.
In fact, it’s the first time two Alpines have qualified in the top 12 since Bahrain last year. Whether that results in a first double points finish since the miracle Brazil 2024 podium remains to be seen.
As an absolute minimum, Gasly must avoid the slide out of the points he suffered in the sprint race, even if beating the Red Bulls on Sunday might be too much of an ask. - JS
Loser: Alex Albon (18th)
The late-2025 trend of Sainz usurping Albon as Williams's best is continuing on the first proper evidence of this year, especially when you consider that Sainz has taken the brunt of Williams's mileage-sapping issues across Australia and here.
As team boss James Vowles's praise at the end of Q1 attested - "that's all the car had in it" - Sainz has been really on the ball this weekend, with Albon consistently appearing half-a-step to a step behind.
Partly this might be down to heavy set-up experimentations - Albon said that he and his crew have been making wild swings and yet "nothing we do seems to fix the car".
"There’s some weird stuff going on in the car," he lamented.
"I’m sure the Cadillac is quicker than us in quite a few corners, at least [quicker than] me, so I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. The biggest issue at the minute is three-wheeling, the car three-wheeling, so we just need to fix it." - VK
Loser: Gabriel Bortoleto (16th)
Bortoleto wasn't tracking all that well relative to Hulkenberg after two sectors of his final lap, so his off in the last corner wasn't all that costly for himself or Audi.
"I struggled a little bit in Q2 with the balance - Q1 felt very good with the car and balance in that lap and then in Q2 just couldn't put things together," he explained.
"Maybe tried a bit too hard in the last corner there. I knew the lap was OK, was improving, it was going to be a good lap - not sure it was enough for Q3, so maybe I tried a bit too hard, trying to aim for high."
It probably wasn't really worth the risk - and it'll go down as a heavy qualifying defeat versus Hulkenberg in the stats sheet - but it's hard to imagine this has changed his weekend much. - VK
Winner: Valtteri Bottas (20th)
A deployment problem denied Valtteri Bottas the chance to split the Aston Martins in sprint qualifying and he retired from Saturday morning's race while in striking distance of Lance Stroll - but main qualifying finally gave him and Cadillac its first competitive 'victory'.
The new team outpaced a rival for the first time as Bottas outqualified Stroll on merit in China and was just two tenths slower than Fernando Alonso in the other Aston Martin. Alex Albon's Williams was six tenths up the road and, sure, there was almost a full second to the back of the midfield proper.
But it would be churlish not to recognise this is a legitimate achievement in the context of Cadillac's journey, as the minimal high-speed aerodynamic demands of the Shanghai circuit mitigated its main weakness. - Scott Mitchell-Malm
Loser: Esteban Ocon (13th)
Ocon was compromised by Bortoleto’s final-corner spin as he had to abandon his final Q2 effort to obey the double-waved yellow flags…but it wasn’t looking particularly good prior to that.
He was already over three tenths down on Bearman through the first two sectors of that abandoned lap - consistent with the deficit Ocon faced to Bearman for much of qualifying.
Ocon knows this as he acknowledged "we need to keep digging” to find more performance.
Otherwise it feels 2026 has simply followed the dominant intra-Haas trend of 2025, that Ocon just can’t consistently match what Bearman can do with the car.
After all, Ocon has only outqualifed Bearman in two of the last nine grand prix qualifying sessions. - JS
