The best qualifying session of the 2025 Formula 1 season? Saturday at the Hungarian Grand Prix certainly has a claim for providing that, thanks in particular to a change of conditions for Q3 resetting the competitive picture.
Who took full advantage, who fell out of the 'window', and who'd underachieved to enough of an extent prior to that that they weren't there to capitalise?
Here's our pick of winners and losers from F1 qualifying at the Hungaroring.
Winner: Charles Leclerc - 1st
It was only two race weekends ago but Leclerc's claim at Silverstone that he was "not doing the job" in qualifying in 2025 feels like a very, very distant memory.
If last weekend's lap to deprive Max Verstappen of third on the grid at Spa - which allowed Leclerc to convert that into a podium in the race - was an overachievement, this McLaren-defying pole position was something else. It was emphatic.
Circumstances (the change of wind conditions) helped, granted, but take nothing away from Leclerc. There's no doubt that qualifying magic is back. - Jack Cozens
Loser: Lewis Hamilton - 12th
The gap between pole position (Leclerc) and 12th on the grid (Hamilton) is not reflected in the actual time gap between them in Q2, which was 0.247s - slightly above-average for the season, but hardly a chasm or indicative of a job done terribly by Hamilton.
In fact, it was borderline a positive outcome given that across FP1, FP2 and FP3 Hamilton never ended up even within three tenths of his team-mate.
Hamilton, of course, hasn't seen it as a positive outcome. Which is fair. If he's to be a frontrunner again in F1, a quarter-of-a-second deficit to his team-mate cannot be anywhere near the norm, even if it doesn't make him "useless" like he says. - Valentin Khorounzhiy
Winner: Aston Martin - 5th, 6th
Whatever the impression at Spa - and the impression was pretty bad indeed - the evidence is pretty robust now that the upgraded Aston Martin AMR25 is a solid F1 car, which on its day is apparently capable of pumping in performances more reminiscent of that early-2023 version of this team.
The two cars were on average 0.118s off pole here, which is marvellous, and while McLaren's Q3 decline flattered Aston Martin like it did anyone else, the third-row lockout hardly came out of the blue.
The car had looked good all weekend: in the hands of Lance Stroll, in the hands of the muscle tear-managing Fernando Alonso, even in the hands of Alonso's FP1 stand-in Felipe Drugovich.
"I would say that it's track characteristics, to be honest," said Alonso. "It will be nice to understand this, why the car is operating in this sweet spot here, because if we understand that, we can use it on the next few races."
You'd rather be solving this kind of puzzle than wondering why the car is slow. - VK
Loser: McLaren - 2nd, 3rd
McLaren still has the fastest car on the grid by a mile and still has a real good shot at 1-2 on Sunday, which even if it doesn't get will anyway have precious little impact on the championship.
But Hungary qualifying was a reminder it can still have a stumble, and probably an example of how a bit of that 'all or nothing' edge can be lost when both of your drivers absolutely cannot afford a 'nothing' given their title battle - so are driving within themselves and allowing some nothing-to-lose rivals to pounce.
Still, you'd rather be in McLaren's position, even on days like these. - VK
Loser - Mercedes - 4th, 15th
A return to the older-spec Mercedes suspension has somewhat restored Kimi Antonelli’s damaged confidence, but that wasn’t enough to stop a third successive qualifying disappointment.
"The confidence was there, because lap one in Q1 was good," Antonelli explained after qualifying 15th (11th initially before a laptime deletion).
"Then lap two in Q2 was wet, in sector two, but then on the new tyre, I had no grip. I don't know what happened.
"Already from Turn 1 I lost the rear completely. It's a shame because I definitely had more confidence but once again, things didn't go my way."
Team-mate George Russell was a much better fourth, but he felt he lost a stealth pole position with a snap through Turn 14 that he reckoned cost him three tenths. - Josh Suttill
Winner: Racing Bulls - 9th, 10th
Racing Bulls makes it into our winners' selection for its double-Q3 appearance - but you probably wouldn't have guessed that just by reading Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar's comments after qualifying.
Their reactions suggest the car was probably the worst-affected by the change of conditions from Q2 to Q3 save for the McLaren. Asked by The Race about where improvements had been made throughout the weekend, Lawson said "it's been a little bit more work than maybe usual, trying to find the sweet spot" and that Racing Bulls "nearly got there through Q2 and then Q3 was just difficult".
But therein lies the reason for its 'winner' status: said turnaround. Lawson's session progression from FP1 to Q3 at the Hungaroring reads: 14th; 15th; 14th; 14th; ninth; ninth.
And OK, Isack Hadjar was understandably disappointed to have gone from third, to sixth, to 10th as a mistake in Q3 meant he "ended up in the grass, and after that, the car wasn’t as enjoyable to drive".
But Racing Bulls will still start with two cars in the top 10 - and has the chance to outfox the team it's chasing down in the constructors' championship, Sauber, which only has one car up at the sharp end. - JC
Loser: Red Bull - 8th, 16th
You have to feel for Yuki Tsunoda. He lapped closer to Max Verstappen in qualifying than he has all season (0.163s off) yet was dumped out of Q1 in 16th place.
It did somewhat back-up the mini qualifying breakthrough Tsunoda had in Spa, he was just unfortunate it coincided with Red Bull's weakest weekend of the year so far.
Both drivers complained of a complete lack of grip that's very different to how the RB21 has felt elsewhere.
Verstappen, eighth - his worst qualifying result of the season - and probably only ahead of Racing Bulls' Hadjar because Hadjar underdelivered on his final Q3 lap, summed it up well.
"There's not been a single lap or a single corner that I've felt good. The whole weekend so far has just been sliding." - JS
Winner: Gabriel Bortoleto - 7th
Sauber/Audi must feel really, really good about the punt it took on Bortoleto last year.
His qualifying advantage over Nico Hulkenberg is now officially a trend, his Sauber's presence on track in Q3 while many others are giving their post-session interviews in the media pen increasingly a familiar sight.
He looked a bit off on Friday - and admitted that "I feel like we had the worst start of the weekend possible", with so little comfort in the car that Sauber used up one of its curfew jokers to sort things out.
Seventh on the grid, three and a half tenths off pole, shows just how much that late-night work paid off - but given how much of a handful the Q3 wind was for many of the top drivers, Bortoleto deserves extra credit for the execution. - VK
Loser: Nico Hulkenberg - 19th
It's a stretch that included his first-ever grand prix podium - so you can semi-rightly respond to the following data with a 'who cares?' - but here are Hulkenberg's gaps to Bortoleto in the past five qualifying sessions (sprint and GP): 0.483s, 0.128s, 0.411s, 0.371s, 0.495s.
It is plainly too much, and there is no great explanation yet for it in Hungary. Hulkenberg reacted to being told Bortoleto's Q1 laptime with an "oh man!" and a swear - but said afterwards he knew "my time was off".
"In Q1 suddenly I found quite a different car, quite a different balance. An extreme change. I don't know what happened, can't really explain it at the moment," he said.
Single-lap pace in F1 is largely the forte of the young. Is Hulkenberg (37), in going up against Bortoleto (20), having his own version of the current Hamilton (40) versus Leclerc (27) dynamic? Time will tell, for both veterans. - VK
Winner: Franco Colapinto - 14th
It might seem strange to classify the driver starting 14th a 'winner' but being ahead of Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly is a much-needed boost for Colapinto.
He followed up on a strong showing in final practice to outpace Gasly by just under a tenth of a second in Q1 - only the second time he's outqualified him this season.
"It's the first time that I find some consistency with the car and I feel a bit more generally better through the corner and entry phases, that I've been struggling quite a lot," Colapinto explained.
"They do feel a lot better, which is of course a good step - but we need to do more work." - JS
Loser: Williams - 13th, 20th
Williams came into the weekend with trepidation about the Hungaroring's layout - due to its long, medium-speed corners and the demand to run at high downforce - but hoped its Spa upgrade would at least make it competitive here.
That hope has been dashed, the trepidation confirmed.
Both Sainz and Albon reverted to past familiar set-ups for qualifying, and it was clear as they went out at the start in Q1, setting up a three-run segment, that the team knew it was in trouble.
Albon never got anything going, stuck in a "negative spiral" of grip after too slow an outlap, while Sainz did what he felt was a "perfect" job to rescue 13th on the grid.
"The reality is that we've spent the whole weekend out of the top 15 cars," he summed up. - VK
Loser: Esteban Ocon - 18th
Ocon was almost three tenths slower than Haas team-mate Ollie Bearman and the worst thing was it wasn't clear to Ocon why that was.
Ocon was "pretty happy" with his lap and just "disappointed" once he saw what his laptime was.
He did point to a key difference to Bearman as a possible explanation for the performance gap.
"Ollie is running a very different set-up on the front wing compared to us, things we can't put on our car, so we need to investigate where that comes from exactly," Ocon explained.
"I won't go into detail but I was having issues with the stability; if I went to Ollie [the set-up Bearman was running] I can't take any corner so that's where the differences and probably the performance [come from]."
When that theory was put to Bearman he said: "It's been like that for the past three or four races, nothing has changed. Just a driver preference thing; we have the same car but running slightly different set-up, but that's been the case across the year so far."
Bearman ended up 11th, the position he's finished the past four grands prix, but he heads into Sunday as the happier (and faster) Haas driver. - JS
