Winners and losers from 2026 Canada F1 sprint qualifying

There’s a very symmetrical team-by-team first four rows of the Formula 1 grid for the Canadian Grand Prix sprint race.

But some of those first eight cars should be very underwhelmed by their results - and there were plenty of ups and downs further back too.

Here’s our winners and losers selection from Montreal sprint qualifying.  

Winner: George Russell (1st)

George Russell hasn’t suddenly silenced the threat posed by his 19-year-old championship-leading team-mate by outqualifying him by 0.068 seconds.

But he has arrested a run of four straight intra-team qualifying defeats and proved Montreal can be a weekend where he gets his title challenge back on track. 

Only a quarter of the job is done, but it’s been done very clinically so far. - Josh Suttill

Losers: Mercedes’ main rivals (3rd-6th)

Aside from Charles Leclerc struggling with brake issues, the McLaren/Ferrari quartet filling the second and thirds rows of the grid didn’t actually sound downbeat at all. In fact Lewis Hamilton sounded perhaps happier than ever at Ferrari, especially over the brand new set-up direction he’d taken thanks to abandoning using the team’s simulator.

But the laptimes suggest there’s nothing for any of this quartet to get excited about in this result. After some sterner challenges in Miami, Mercedes and its upgraded car look back to being firmly ahead in Montreal based on this session’s results. - Matt Beer

Loser: Red Bull (7th + 8th)

The biggest performance drop among the lead group comes from Red Bull, which went from fighting right at the front in Miami to qualifying only seventh and eighth in Montreal.

Max Verstappen reported such a bad ride problem that his feet were being thrown off the pedals. Team-mate Isack Hadjar was just a tenth of a second slower, but that felt like more of a reflection of Verstappen having a particularly bad day than Hadjar striding back onto his tail. - MB

Winner: Fernando Alonso (16th)

Stick with us here. You’re probably thinking, ‘how can a driver who crashed out of SQ1 be a winner from sprint qualifying?’ 

But Friday in Montreal was easily the most competitive Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin have looked all season.

Alonso looked genuinely capable of nicking a place in SQ2 on merit before a rare sizeable driver error from the 44-year-old. 

The resulting red flag meant he still advanced anyway - the first time this season Aston Martin has escaped the first section of qualifying. 

And that's a genuine sign of progress being made, even if he was aided by two drivers not even taking part in sprint qualifying. 

It still doesn’t mean Aston Martin is anything better than the 10th fastest team, but in Montreal so far, Alonso looks close enough to pick off some scraps, even if he has to be on the very limit to do so. - JS

Winner: Carlos Sainz (10th)

Carlos Sainz scalded his Williams team for the “state” it was in with its execution in Miami sprint qualifying last time out, but things couldn’t have been any more different in Canada.

“That run plan was as good as it gets,” praised Sainz on the radio after Williams helped him to get through to SQ3.

It came with the last flying lap of the session, in which Sainz usurped Nico Hulkenberg for the crucial 10th spot.

OK, in SQ3 itself, he was a distant 10th and eight-tenths adrift of Arvid Lindblad’s Racing Bulls, the only other ‘midfield’ car in the top 10, in ninth.

But with team-mate Alex Albon not even making qualifying after hitting a groundhog, for Sainz, there was no reliving his Miami execution issues and a decent sprint start is the result. - Jack Benyon

Losers: Alex Albon and Liam Lawson (21st & 22nd)

Neither driver was able to even take part in sprint qualifying through incidents in practice that weren’t of their own making. 

Alex Albon made unfortunate contact with a groundhog, which sent him into the wall and delivered substantial damage to his FW46 - too much for Williams to repair his car before sprint qualifying. 

Liam Lawson suffered a suspected hydraulic issue after just five laps of practice. That was no easy fix for his Racing Bulls team, as his car also couldn’t be repaired in time for sprint qualifying. 

The team-mates of Albon and Lawson both got to SQ3, only making their absence from qualifying all the more frustrating. - JS

Winner: Sergio Perez (17th)

Sergio Perez was just 0.13s away from a Cadillac progressing to the second part of an F1 qualifying session for the first time.

And he still earned the team's best qualifying result yet, even if that is only 17th place. 

The 0.86s gap to team-mate Valtteri Bottas was flattered by Bottas not finishing a better lap in time before the red flag in SQ1, but Perez was still half a second to the good after the first two sectors.

So this was probably going to be an emphatic intra-team victory for Perez either way and even though one-lap pace is where Cadillac is more competitive at the moment, he could be a real nuisance to some midfield cars in the sprint on Saturday. - Scott Mitchell-Malm

Loser: Pierre Gasly (19th)

Sadly, Pierre Gasly was one of the many drivers caught out by the Alonso crash/red flag in SQ1. 

Gasly was 19th before that red flag having not had a full battery pack on his only proper flying lap up to then - and with just 1m46s left in the session at the restart, was one of a host of cars that didn’t make it around to start a lap.

The three cars that did couldn’t improve anyway, so even a mad dash and overtaking half the grid at the pit exit couldn’t inspire a turnaround for Gasly.

Team-mate Franco Colapinto’s 13th hints that this wasn’t going to be another ‘Alpine ahead of the midfield on its own’ kind of day for the team anyway. But it’ll still hurt, as you fancy Gasly to wring everything out of the car and he didn’t really get the chance today. - JB

Winner: Arvid Lindblad (9th)

There’s a trio of Red Bull F1 cars in seventh through ninth on this grid, all covered by a little over two and a half tenths of a second.

And the last of those is rookie Arvid Lindblad in the Racing Bulls - which is a combination that frankly shouldn’t be qualifying that close to Verstappen in related machinery at this stage in Lindblad’s F1 career.

With team-mate Liam Lawson not even able to take part in sprint qualifying, Lindblad did an excellent job of carrying the Racing Bulls flag solo, and advertising himself to the Red Bull team he’ll be starting right behind. - MB

Loser: Haas (14th + 15th)

A freshly-upgraded Haas promised a lot but delivered little as Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman were spared the last places in SQ2 only by the fact that Alonso didn’t start the session.

This upgrade was hoped to be the step Haas needed to re-establish its form from the first couple of races as a challenger at the head of the midfield, but it certainly doesn’t look the part.

"We expected, the new upgrade to be a bit more easy to put on track, and we expected it to be straight away a step forward," Bearman admitted.

"And that hasn't really been the case. So we really struggled in free practice and didn't really learn much.

"We did a big step for the sprint qualifying. And we need to see if it's worked, actually. We need to understand that. But I just really struggled with grip out there and struggling to feel confident with the balance that we had."

It’s worth remembering a sprint weekend is a tough time to bring upgrades with only one practice to get your head around changes, and Ocon’s crash in practice won’t have helped.

The team will hope it can only get better from here, but that’s just not a given in F1. - JB