George Russell is the big Winner after qualifying in Barcelona, as he has stemmed the flow of momentum on Kimi Antonelli’s side.

Here is PlanetF1.com’s full list of winners and losers from the 2026 Barcelona Grand Prix qualifying.

George Russell and Charles Leclerc headline Barcelona qualifying verdict

Winner: George Russell

“I kind of feel like my old self again, where every lap I’m doing my job, always fighting those top positions,” Russell said after qualifying on pole position for the Barcelona Grand Prix.

“Obviously, for the last few races, for numerous reasons, haven’t quite been on our side, but I came in this weekend with just a clean slate, felt good and, yeah, just great to be on pole.”

It’s been a bruising few weeks of misfortune and toil for Russell, coinciding with a vein of rich form for Antonelli, but the British driver stemmed the flow with an eye-openingly impressive final lap in Q3 to definitively underline a three-tenths pace advantage over the Italian.

Revealing that he’s gone back to an “approach that works”, Russell said he has managed to restore the feeling with the car back to where he was at the start of the season, and admitted that he, with his engineers, had gone astray in recent races.

“Car set-up, mentality, just going back to basics really,” he said of his change of approach.

“You’re trying to constantly improve, and I think that, you know, doing some copy-pasting [Antonelli] probably really put me on the back foot.

“So, this weekend I’ve just gone in my own direction and that’s what I’ve done in the past for the last few years, and really glad to see it paying off.”

Antonelli’s daunting lead means that pole position, in itself, means very little, but it’s a confidence-boosting affirmation for Russell to show that this fight isn’t over just yet.

As for Antonelli, how he handles the adverse moments of this season will be illuminating: it’s not an unreasonable position to suggest that, in his second year, he is not the finished article in every way.

There have been flashes of how his temperament can take over if he gets frustrated and, on an occasion where Russell has the upper hand on pace, how Antonelli will be able to keep the bigger picture in mind to bank the points and control his advantage will be a key question this year.

He ruled out his missing FP1 as having an impact on his preparations for the weekend, but said he’s been chasing the feeling throughout.

“Not really happy,” he said.

“Just struggling with the feeling of the car, very low grip here, and just been attacking a bit too much corners.

“And yeah, in the last lap I lost basically everything in the last sector, a couple of big slides and tyre just went away from me. So definitely was not the best performance, but long run was good, so looking forward to that for tomorrow and hopefully we will have the same kind of pace.”

If Russell is to have a hope of the title, starting to chip away at Antonelli’s lead will be imperative, and his emphatic pole position has set him up nicely.

Loser: Charles Leclerc

Having had the legs on Lewis Hamilton in Q2, any chance of Charles Leclerc being in and around the front row disappeared in an instant when he pushed too hard and threw his car off the road and into the barriers.

It’s the second time in a week that Leclerc has crashed and, while extenuating circumstances factored into the first, this most recent escapade was all on his shoulders.

“I tried to release brakes earlier, trying to carry more speed, as I knew it was the main weakness, if not the only weakness, because we were very fast in all the corners,” he explained.

“Tried to carry more speed in, worked out, but then I went on traction on the dirty side of the track, and lost the rear, but there’s not much to excuse myself.”

Following the Monaco Grand Prix, Leclerc opted to follow Lewis Hamilton’s lead on a change of brake materials by swapping from Brembo to Carbone Industries, and he ruled out that having any sort of contribution to the mistake.

“I felt very at ease with it, and there’s nothing of that,” he said. “There’s no excuses on trying to find the reference or whatsoever.

“I feel very ashamed after last three weekends that have been particularly difficult for me to find pace for issues I had today and this weekend.

“Everything felt really, really good, and in these days I need to deliver, and I didn’t, so I feel very ashamed in general.”

Leclerc is entering what appears to be a whole new phase in his dynamic with Ferrari and, despite his new long-term contract with the Scuderia, it may not be the most comfortable one.

Hamilton’s upswing in performance, in which the British driver has pointedly singled out how team boss Fred Vasseur is working hard behind the scenes to help bring about the changes the seven-time F1 World Champion has needed to increase his comfort, have unlocked the Lewis that has been missing in recent years and, perhaps realising this fact, Leclerc is having to play keep-up.

With Hamilton being the mould-breaker by chasing the CI brake materials change – a small poke in the eye for brake supplier Brembo even if the technical relationship remains intact – Leclerc following suit just a few races later gives an impression that it’s the Brit who is starting to figure out just what is needed to turn Ferrari into a proper challenger.

It’s something that, of course, Hamilton has huge experience in but Leclerc is no longer the new kid on the block and, now in his seventh year, is making costly mistakes that only give his garage more work to do at a time when Hamilton is starting to pump in consistent results.

Is it any wonder Hamilton’s jubilation is becoming evident?

Winner: Lewis Hamilton

Hamilton felt he had been on the back foot after sitting out FP1, and was struggling for pace throughout practice as he wound up the guts of half a second down in FP3.

Ferrari has brought a decent-sized upgrade package to Barcelona and, in his quest to unlock the setup and get the car into a sweet spot, Hamilton revealed he’d stepped away from the track outright in order to “reset” for qualifying.

“For the first time ever, I left the track between P3 and qualifying,” he said.

“So, I said, “I’ve got to get out of here.” And I went back to my motorhome and I was just on the engineer call, just on my phone, but I kind of went where I had a bit of a reset. Came back and I was able to somehow get back on it. So yeah, whatever it did, it worked.”

That it did: Hamilton went quickest of all in Q1 and led the Ferrari challenge in Q3 as Leclerc crashed out.

Earning his first Ferrari front row, splitting the two Mercedes drivers, his efforts drew cheers from the crowds in the grandstands: a recognition of the talent and hard work that is starting to pay off, from an audience that hasn’t always been so appreciative of Hamilton.

More importantly for Hamilton, while his form through Canada and Monaco could have been explained away as being down to the somewhat unique characteristics of both, there is no such caveat here in Spain: Barcelona is a ‘normal’ circuit and representative of typical demands.

Keep turning the screw on Leclerc in the way he is, and Hamilton will end up winning over the team that has unquestionably been the Monegasque’s for the last half-decade.

Loser: Alpine

It’s been a good week for Alpine’s argumentative team leadership after successfully winning its right of review over Monaco to start the weekend in Barcelona, but the on-track stuff has been less stellar.

Pierre Gasly, despite changing chassis as Alpine broke curfew on Friday night, encountered unexpected behaviour behind the wheel with both chassis, leaving the Frenchman more of a passenger than a driver whenever he hit the brakes in the A526.

“We’ve been scratching our heads since the first lap of FP1,” he said.

“Every lap in Turn 1 and 4, as soon as I brake with my steering straight, the car is sending me left and right as I’m trying to just go straight.

“I don’t understand. I’ve never had that in 10 years in Formula 1.

“We’ve never had that with this car. We are not understanding where it comes from.”

Qualifying 14th, Gasly said he has “zero confidence” with the car, and that the data from the car is quite anomalous.

“What we see is very, very strange on the data, because I’m not applying any type of steering, and the car is sending me in one way or the other,” he said.

“So it’s not like it’s always the same yaw as far, so it’s not like I can predict what’s going on, so it’s just quite messy.”

Gasly didn’t rule out the possibility of breaking parc ferme to take on a pitlane start, given the necessity for Alpine to figure out the problem, particularly ahead of the Sprint weekend in Austria in two weeks.

“I’m not confident at all to drive 65 laps like this, because I’m not having the control on the braking,” he said.

“So I need to see with the team if we can do anything there, or if we want to try something, but it will be quite difficult.”

It wasn’t much different for Franco Colapinto, who revealed that he never felt he was getting his A526 to do what he wanted on track, leading to a feeling of being very “disconnected” behind the wheel.

More from the Barcelona Grand Prix

George Russell reveals reversal of ‘wrong decisions’ behind Barcelona pole

Verstappen drops blunt take after Barcelona qualifying twist

Winner: Sergio Perez/Cadillac

Qualifying in 19th, Sergio Perez strolled into the media pen after qualifying with the aura of a man who knows he and Cadillac are meshing well, and taking down some big players in the process.

Being just two seconds off pole position at an aero-dependent circuit such as the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is nothing to be sniffed at but, more impressively, Perez wound up a second clear of the hapless Aston Martins at the very back – all while having qualified with full focus being on race setup and preparation.

But, rather than looking back at the two green cars, Perez instead pointed to how he wants to find another six-tenths to be “in the mix properly”, while saying on the team radio that he felt almost everything had been maximised.

Speaking to the media, Perez suggested a little bit of time had been left behind, due to a deployment problem through the last two corners,

This is a year of learning and gaining experience for Cadillac and, while there are clearly operational weaknesses to be ironed out, there is a sense that there is huge potential to be unlocked from what is proving to be quite a tidy car design.

Some of these weaknesses were more evident on Valtteri Bottas’ side of the garage, with the Finn barely making it into qualifying after his brake issue in FP3 saw Cadillac up against it to get the car ready.

Loser: Fernando Alonso

Returning home to a circuit in which he is the hero, the reality of the situation he finds himself in this year did appear to get to Fernando Alonso a little on Saturday.

While the Spaniard has cut a diplomatic figure for most of this year, the frustrations of having such a tough campaign after what was huge optimism last year shone through as he spoke to the media after qualifying in last place.

With Aston Martin well off the pace of every other team, including the newcomers Cadillac, Alonso also wound up behind Lance Stroll to end a two-year streak of outqualifying the Canadian.

For Stroll, the accomplishment didn’t merit any comment, saying he “didn’t give a s**t”, while Alonso was irritated by a question put to him by PlanetF1.com about whether the circuit has exposed another weakness in the area of aerodynamic efficiency.

“We know that we have the worst car and the worst engine,” he said.

“We’ve been very clear in every race so far that we have to work.

“In the second part of the year arrives a new car on the aerodynamic side, arrives a new engine, and we have the hopes there.

“We repeat every weekend. We will arrive in Austria in two weeks, we will be last in qualifying.

“We know the weaknesses. We know that we have to work, and we are on it.”

Alonso’s frustrations coincide with new speculation about his future: following on from an initial report from Motorsport Italy that Alonso could reunite with Alpine in 2027, PlanetF1.com has been informed by multiple sources that Flavio Briatore, together with new title sponsor Gucci, is eager to convince Alonso to return to Alpine and reunite with him.

Does Alonso have the added headache of trying to figure out whether to stick with the path he committed to, placing trust in Adrian Newey’s processes and the path back to the midfield, or return to familiar climes where more significant short-term success may be possible?

Winner: Liam Lawson

Qualifying eighth in Spain, Liam Lawson is coming good this year.

Just over a year ago, Lawson’s return to Racing Bulls saw him rebuild after his difficult tenure at Red Bull, but those difficulties have been consigned to the past and, now paired with a strong rookie teammate, Lawson is delivering.

Having scored a seventh place in Canada, and a sixth in Monaco (fifth before Gasly’s penalties were rescinded), Lawson’s eighth-place grid slot is indicative of a very solid driver and car combination – he was three-tenths clear of Lindblad in Q2.

In reality, with there being four top teams, ninth place is the best any midfield driver can hope for, meaning there’s little more Lawson could realistically have aimed for in the absence of Leclerc from those top eight positions.

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