While some drivers successfully used parc ferme re-opening post-sprint race to change their fate at the Qatar Grand Prix, the misery of others continued in the desert.
Here are our picks for the biggest winners and losers from grand prix qualifying.
Loser - Lando Norris (2nd)
A fraction later on the brakes into Turn 2 and Lando Norris had to bail out, defeated.
There was no excuse of being caught in traffic like he was in sprint qualifying - not that Norris played that up at all really and was happy to accept his shortcomings - but it’s a shame because after the first Q3 runs Norris was ahead of Oscar Piastri.
There’s been a sort of air of invincibility around Piastri all weekend and Norris almost did enough to challenge it and claim a crucial track position advantage for Sunday.
Instead, on a track where it’s very difficult to overtake, he’ll have a ‘nothing to lose’ Max Verstappen attacking him while he also tries to take Piastri. Less than ideal... - Jack Benyon
Winner - Pierre Gasly (9th)
Pierre Gasly’s qualifying heroics in F1’s worst car are becoming almost unremarkable in their frequency, but he’s undoubtedly again doing remarkable things with a car that couldn’t get out of Q1 in Alpine team-mate Franco Colapinto’s hands.
The bottom five was something of an F1 2025 rogue’s gallery of drivers who have really struggled versus their team-mates this season: Yuki Tsunoda (clinging to F1 by his fingertips), Esteban Ocon (battered by Ollie Bearman), Lance Stroll (nowhere near Fernando Alonso), Lewis ‘this is my worst F1 season ever’ Hamilton, and Colapinto.
Gasly’s hyped radio message to his team after Q2 told you what a special lap he felt that was, and that’s three Q3 appearances on the bounce now for Gasly. - Ben Anderson
Loser - Lewis Hamilton (18th)
Another day, another clear-cut elimination in the first part of qualifying for Qatar, leaving Hamilton to join Colapinto and Stroll as the three drivers eliminated in both SQ1 and Q1 this weekend.
Hamilton said he had a better feeling versus Friday, but he couldn’t get his final lap together, coming up four tenths short of his Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc, which was never going to be enough to get to Q2 on a weekend where the Ferrari looks slower than the lead midfield cars.
Even with better execution, the underlying pace seems so poor that it’s difficult to imagine Hamilton enduring anything other than a very long and painful 57-lap Qatar GP. - Josh Suttill
Winner - Oscar Piastri (1st)
Piastri’s big snap into Turn 4 that cost him two tenths in sprint qualifying left the door open for a ‘if Norris hadn’t caught traffic, maybe he would have beaten Piastri’ argument.
But today, there was nothing but certainty that Piastri was the best McLaren driver and an undeniably deserving polesitter.
While Norris braked later into Turn 2 and had to bail, then heading into the pits without enough fuel, Piastri came past to take the start/finish line reversing the order to take pole with a really nice lap.
After the sprint win, this is shaping up to be a 100% perfect Piastri weekend. Will it be enough to give him a fighting chance in Abu Dhabi? Calm down, Benyon, there’s still the small matter of tomorrow’s race to go! - JB
Loser - Alex Albon (15th)
Alex Albon admitted he "just didn't get the lap in" during Q2, which explains why he qualified in 15th place, rather than the seventh on the grid taken by his Williams team-mate Carlos Sainz - pending an investigation into that errant plastic that came off Sainz's wheel.
Albon's deficit was partly from overreaching to make up the deficit Albon has had in high-speed corners to Sainz this weekend.
It means he faces an uphill task to prevent it from being seven consecutive grands prix without a points finish on Sunday. - JS
Loser - Yuki Tsunoda (16th)
What’s probably been Yuki Tsunoda’s brightest weekend of 2025 so far took a major blow with a Q1 elimination - even though Tsunoda wasn’t actually much slower than he was on Friday's equivalent session relative to this team-mate Verstappen.
Tsunoda was 0.289s slower than Verstappen in Q1 on Saturday, only 0.003s further adrift than he had been on Verstappen in the equivalent session - SQ1 - on Friday, after which Tsunoda went on to take fifth on the grid. This time he was dumped out.
He “had no idea because that lap was pretty tidy” with no obvious errors and a good feeling aboard the RB21, leading him to call the Q1 exit “strange”.
But such are the tight margins in F1 right now, that small deficit was enough for Tsunoda to be on the wrong side of the Q1/Q2 cut-off.
And if “nothing has been decided” with his future as Tsunoda claims, it feels like he’s just missed a big chance to build on a really promising first part of the weekend. - JS
Winner - Isack Hadjar (6th)
Yesterday, Isack Hadjar had a lap deleted and slipped out of sprint qualifying in SQ2. There would be no such slip on Saturday as he led the midfield in sixth for Racing Bulls.
With a tight constructors’ fight with Haas and Aston Martin to consider, it’s a big result, and for the second day in a row, he outqualified his team-mate Liam Lawson by getting a session further than him in qualifying.
Not that that matters judging by the fact that when asked if he knew what Red Bull had decided in terms of line-ups next year, he admitted he knew the answer and giggled.
That's going to do nothing to dispel the belief he’s taking Tsunoda’s seat. - JB
Loser - Franco Colapinto (20th)
Franco Colapinto’s tricky run since he got his 2026 Alpine renewal has continued with one of the toughest weekends of his season in Qatar, following on from Alpine’s mini-revival in fortunes being exclusive to Gasly in Brazil and Las Vegas.
Even with his fastest lap deleted, Pierre Gasly was comfortably quicker than Colapinto in Q1, with the Argentine ending up nearly half a second from advancing to Q2 while Gasly progressed all the way to ninth on the grid.
Colapinto needs a stronger end to the season than this, or you have to wonder when the question marks over his future will return. - JS
Loser - Lance Stroll (19th)
Lance Stroll and the Lusail circuit never seems like a particularly happy combination and that's continued into 2025.
"I feel like I'm on the limit with the grip that I have and can't find any more pace," was Stroll's worrying verdict, given team-mate Alonso - who got to Q3 - was well over four tenths ahead in Q1, the last comparable session for the pair.
"I felt pretty good in the car, but the laptime is just not coming together for me here and I didn't manage to go any quicker than that." - JS
