Winners & losers from F1 2026 Brazilian GP Friday practice
A familiar name at the top of the timesheet, but not your run of the mill F1 Friday at the Brazilian Grand Prix, as one struggling frontrunner got back in the groove again while the usual kings of Friday practice produced their worst result of the season.
Here are our winners and losers from the first day of F1 track action at Interlagos.
Loser: Ferrari (6th & 7th)
Charles Leclerc and Ferrari had been fastest in Friday practice at three of the past four races, going back to October’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, and a 6-7 FP2 result in Brazil (with Leclerc behind Lewis Hamilton) was the first time all season Ferrari has finished Friday outside the top five on the timesheet.
Leclerc called it a “very, very difficult Friday” and described the feeling inside the car as “strange” and “very poor”.
“We were losing in the straights, but I think the car in the corners just felt probably one of the worst Friday feelings of the season," he added.
“So I think there's a lot to be found in corners, more than in the straights, where we know we have a deficit. Normally we are very fast in corners and today was not the case.”
Team boss Fred Vasseur joked this was a Friday when Ferrari “have 200 kilos” of fuel inside the cars in order to flip the script, such is their usually prodigious form in free practice, but in a serious moment then admitted Ferrari has “a lot of work to do on the balance”.
“The drivers, they were not happy,” he confirmed, while also saying he was “not less optimistic than last week” when Leclerc topped Friday in Mexico.
“We had a couple of times a deployment issue in the lap,” Vasseur added. “We have to fine-tune everything.
“On his fastest lap, he [Leclerc] lost a couple of tenths in a straight line. I would say that it’s not a drama. It’s more for you [the media] to be focused on page one [of the timing screen], but we are not.
“We know that we have a lot to do on the balance. The balance was not good. The tarmac is the opposite of one week ago. It’s creating a lot of work to do and a difference compared to last week.” - Ben Anderson
Winner: McLaren (2nd & 5th)
Fastest in FP1 and looking competitive on longer runs - McLaren's upgrade package for Brazil appears to be working well, with the usual caveat that Fridays don't always offer perfect insight into the order.
Senior racing director Randy Singh said it's "very likely" the upgrades - led by a new front wing - will stay on the car, and Friday went "really well" for the team, while Lando Norris cautioned that the team still looks two-tenths off Kimi Antonelli's Mercedes but "pretty good" compared to the other teams.
Norris also felt gently encouraged that McLaren's new 2027-ethos front wing had begun to address the long-standing edginess of the car's balance.
"I would say maybe there’s a small change in the right direction, that it seems just a little bit more straightforward to drive," he said.
"I don’t think we can ever judge things over just one track. But so far, for today, things have seemed a little bit more straightforward."
After missing FP1, Singh says Oscar Piastri was also "immediately on the pace" - something which hasn't always happened this year - but the usual rule from recent races applies: the team needs to optimise qualifying, where its knife-edge car has let its long-run pace down all too often. - Jack Benyon
Winner: Gabriele Mini (7th in FP1)
Every now and then, a lesser-known Friday driver pops up high on the timesheets in an FP1 outing, which is exactly what Gabriele Mini did on his second appearance for Alpine by setting the seventh-fastest time to head the midfield pack.
"Gabby did a very good job to be a little bit quicker than his team-mate," said Alpine managing director Steve Nielsen.
"[It's the] second weekend in a row for him and he looks like a seasoned campaigner already. He literally didn't put a foot wrong, which is really good."
The 21-year-old Italian, when he wasn't reading from the standard FP1 driver script about focusing on doing a good job for the team, showed that he wasn't keen to rest on his laurels after making a positive impression and admitted to areas where he knew his lap, quick as it was, could have been better.
"There were a few things that, let’s say, didn’t allow me to make the best lap," said Mini when asked by The Race to break down his lap.
"The lap of your life, it’s really hard to get in an FP1, but where I had some margin was in corners like Turn 1, because there was never a clear run before the actual push, so I never really had an idea, so I took a bit of margin there, which I know I have.
"And then some other corners, a bit in the braking points, some slides that I got that could have been better. It’s hard to really say how much time. I don’t [say] one second, but for sure a few tenths are easy.
"Something that we could have done better with the switches as well, so not only my side. But that’s something that, as I said, you get in FP1 to then improve in FP2, both driver- and engineer-wise. So it’s normal to have those kinds of things, I’d say."
Mini, who was a star name in his karting career and has since won the 2020 Italian F4 title and races at every level up to and including F2, has shown that not only is he quick but also determined to improve.
And those are two key prerequisites of a potential F1 race driver. - Edd Straw
Loser: Anyone hoping Kimi Antonelli would switch off...
For anyone unfamiliar with old English idioms, something ‘after the Lord Mayor’s Show’ is a classic expression to describe something mundane, or disappointment following something much grander – like, for instance, a bog-standard F1 Friday for Kimi Antonelli five days after winning the world championship!
But anyone hoping Antonelli would be switching off with some kind of post-title hangover will be sorely disappointed by how he breezed through practice at Interlagos with all his rivals at arm’s length.
"It’s the next Lord Mayor’s show for him, not the after," said Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord.
"There’s two big things. We’ve got our constructors’ championship to win and a job to complete, and both drivers are really determined to do that, to translate and recognise the effort of everyone back in Brixworth and in Brackley.
"And then this is the start of 2027 for Kimi, and he’s determined to finish the season on a high, but take that momentum through into the winter."
There is no hint of complacency, change in mindset, or relaxing off the gas for the new world champion.
Without him, Mercedes would have looked right in the mix against McLaren and Red Bull, but nothing more. With Antonelli it heads into Saturday as the pole favourite - if the weather doesn’t change, of course. - Scott Mitchell-Malm
Winner: Colton Herta (20th in FP1)
It looks like Colton Herta has really, genuinely, finally done it – he qualifies for an F1 superlicence, in one of the most unnecessary and dragged-out driver eligibility storylines of all time.
Herta needed to rack up 100km in FP1, and avoid any licence penalty points, to get the one bonus superlicence point required to finally hit the threshold he and Cadillac thought he’d reached a week ago in Mexico.
That basically meant 23 laps of Interlagos. Herta’s credited with 31, which is well past the kilometre threshold – although, as Cadillac’s Marc Hynes mentioned, there’s a tiny degree of doubt whether you count only timed laps or just what’s logged in the session.
By our count, Herta managed 23 timed laps that were not inlaps or outlaps, so we reckoned he should be safe. Hynes said 24 was the “sweet spot”, but this just means being absolutely 100% sure either way.
And Herta avoided any sanction in-session that would deny him the bonus superlicence, after a near-miss not coming into the pits when the session was red flagged because he was too close to the pit entry to react when the panels lit up. Phew!
The FIA subsequently confirmed that Herta’s now all good, so this is now something that everybody, especially him, can stop worrying about... - SMM
Winner: Gabriel Bortoleto’s Audi (8th)
The one Audi that held together all day was rapid, leading the midfield by a couple of tenths and picking off Isack Hadjar’s underperforming Red Bull for good measure.
“The track was quite grippy today, FP2 especially, so quite in a happy place,” reported Gabriel Bortoleto. “I think the car was behaving well, I was driving well today.”
The key of course will be building on that encouraging start through Saturday, when conditions could change, and ensuring the car holds together well enough to avoid another scoring opportunity slipping through Audi’s fingers.
“Honestly, my car has been working OK this weekend, and hopefully it can keep up like this,” Bortoleto added, “and hopefully they fix also Nico's car, because we had a good performance this weekend, I'm sure he can come strong as well.” - BA
Loser: Nico Hulkenberg's Audi...
There was a bad case of deja vu for Audi where one side of the garage was again beset by reliability trouble.
In Mexico, Bortoleto logged no laps in FP1. In Brazil, it was Nico Hulkenberg’s turn – except he went one ‘better’, completing zero laps at all, all day.
That’s because FP1 stand-in Freddie Slater took over Hulkenberg’s car in the opening session, but ground to a halt with what eventually turned out to be a gearbox problem.
Not only did this ruin Slater’s outing one week after his Mexico FP1 debut was slightly limited by a different problem, it was so complicated to trace that by the time Audi had a handle on the issue it was too late to get everything ready for Hulkenberg to drive in FP2.
Racing director Allan McNish couldn’t hide his frustration. The only silver lining was the seven laps Slater did, he enjoyed, and the team was impressed by, as the 18-year-old has made a good impact with his approach off-track and the quality of the work he’s started to do on it. - SMM
Winner: Haas (10th & 16th)
Ollie Bearman was within two tenths of the lead of the midfield in practice two on Friday, a welcome distraction from Haas's dramatic off-track headline-making with Rafael Camara replacing Esteban Ocon this weekend.
The usual practice caveats apply but 10th is a very handy place for Haas to end its day, although its lack of pace on the hard tyre and the reprimand Camara received for badly impeding Leclerc means this entry has its drawbacks.
But quick on the softs, and with Camara doing "brilliantly" on his first day in the car, there's a silver lining to what was always going to be a tough weekend amid the current turmoil at this team. - JB
