MONZA – There’s a very obvious winner from Saturday’s qualifying as Pierre Gasly took a maiden pole, but who else makes our list of Winners and Losers?

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

Winners and losers from the 2026 Italian Grand Prix qualifying

Winner: Pierre Gasly

It’s been a long time coming for Pierre Gasly, whose maiden pole position meant it was two days in a row where Alpine has dominated the headlines – albeit for very different reasons!

Having been stripped of his third-place podium finish in Monaco in the International Court of Appeal decision released on Friday, Gasly shrugged off the disappointment to consistently run near the front through qualifying; an impressive feat made all the moreso by the fact he had actually missed the first hour of practice as he handed his car over to Paul Aron’s rookie running.

But, nine years since making his debut, the French driver eclipsed everybody with a time half a tenth faster than his nearest rival, highlighting just how adept he is at the Milan circuit – Sunday marks six years to the day since his sole Grand Prix victory, at the same track, in his AlphaTauri in 2020.

This was no fluke encounter either. Fresh off the back of Alpine’s upgrade package introduced at Zandvoort, Alpine’s apparent move back into the mix at the front of the midfield was brought more into focus at a circuit with rather unique setup demands.

With Alpine getting the setup right with a car powered by the best all-round engine on the grid, the positioning of the car for the final run was exemplary: far enough behind the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton up ahead to not be hindered at all, but close enough to drive into the closing pocket of air left behind the SF-26.

Added to that was a different energy deployment strategy that prioritised apex and exit speed through Parabolica, which gave Gasly an edge on the run to the finish line.

“Yesterday in P2, things felt decent but, you know, for top 10,” he said.

“I think we made a few tweaks for P3, which again gave me a bit more confidence, and in practice I’ve never really had any tows. We knew that there was a bit more on the table in the practice sessions and then I think it was a very good execution from the team, you know, always putting me in a great position on track, managing the gap as best we could, really.

“So, I think my last lap, managed to target, you know, slightly over 2.5 seconds behind Lewis when he was going to be fast and sort of, like, drag me with him. So, I think it was perfect execution.

“The car balance is probably one of the best I’ve had so far this year, really. Again, gave me the confidence to, you know, attack all these corners and sliding around and playing around with the car, and we managed to make it work in that last run when everything mattered. So, I think it’s not down to, obviously, one simple parameter. I think everybody did a very good job and we’ve been rewarded for it.”

Can he dream of making it a second F1 victory? “That’s a problem for tomorrow.”

Loser: Lando Norris and McLaren

Off the back of two consecutive race victories, Lando Norris’ growing momentum in a championship defence that needs a few things to go his way foundered badly in qualifying.

The problems weren’t really down to his driving, moreso in general execution on McLaren’s part, and his relatively lowly ninth-place finish wasn’t helped by him losing the all-important tow from Oscar Piastri on the final run.

This was after Piastri had locked up into Turn 1 and aborted the lap, meaning Norris was left to punch his way through the air the whole way around his final lap.

“Most of my time loss is just in the straights,” he said.

“So it’s not nothing I can do. It wasn’t my best lap either. I’m not going to deny that, but the majority of my time [loss] is just lost in the straights.

“On the second run, it was my time to go behind and get a better slipstream, and that certainly didn’t go as I hoped!

So, nothing I can really complain about. We’re just unlucky today, and that’s the price of being close in the pit lane and having to go out first.”

With McLaren “one of the slowest on the straights”, Norris pointed to how capturing a slipstream is crucial to laptime for the MCL40, suggesting that it’s worth “half a second” to them.

Piastri had managed to get a reasonable first laptime in, having got a tow around, but didn’t have a slipstream for his second flying run. Attempting to compensate for being two-tenths down at the first corner, he ran long into the corner and aborted, costing himself the lap and Norris the tow.

With both McLarens struggling on the brakes, Norris revealed that he’d encountered pulling and “no confidence” with a lack of consistency, with the issue having not been apparent earlier in the weekend.

Added to McLaren’s woes was a failure from the pitwall to properly communicate to Piastri to stay out of the way of Verstappen and Lawson, on flying laps, as he emerged from the pitlane – this resulted in him being given a three-place grid penalty.

Monza was not expected to be one of McLaren’s most competitive circuits of the season anyway, but mistakes in execution made the result worse than it should have been.

Winner: George Russell

The happy George Russell is back after his head had dropped towards the end of the first half of the season, and the Mercedes driver made the most of his teammate’s assistance to surge to provisional pole – only to be bested by Gasly right at the end.

Russell praised Gasly’s and Alpine’s flawless execution, but the British driver expressed confidence that, over a race distance, the Mercedes will be able to compete with the Alpine for the victory.

Asides from that, Russell’s main takeaway from Saturday is that the resurgence in form that was evident in Zandvoort has continued this weekend at a circuit with very different characteristics.

“I’m more pleased just about the performance in general,” he said.

“I’ve come back from the summer break, every lap, every session, I’ve been sort of in the mix of the top three positions, similar to where I was at the start of the year.

“I had that very tough run of form prior to the break where every lap, you know, I wasn’t even inside the top five.

“So just to come back, I’m just sort of pleased to have found my feet again. Of course, the win is going to be very important tomorrow, but I’m more pleased about the performance.”

With Antonelli starting from 20th, Russell has a big opportunity to close the gap considerably on Antonelli in the Drivers’ Championship.

As for the Italian himself, the knowledge of his engine penalty meant that he never really competed in Q3 on a level footing; instead being used to create the tow for his teammate, which can’t be much fun when that person is also a chief rival for the title.

“Mixed feelings!” was how Antonelli summed it up, having tackled the lap with a bigger fuel load than usual, and a more cautious approach in order to ensure that he didn’t mess up the Mercedes tactic – an example of how wrong it could go being offered by McLaren with Piastri’s error.

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Loser: Aston Martin

After the positivity of the chassis upgrades and the clear performance step made across Budapest and Zandvoort, Monza has brought into sharp focus just how off the boil the team is with the current performance level of the Honda power unit.

“Monza is a challenge for our power unit, and the qualifying result reflects this,” was Shintaro Orihara’s summary of the situation, which left Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll at the very back of the grid.

Indicative of the cooperation that remains between the team and its power unit supplier, neither driver dug the boot in about falling to the back again due to the weaknesses of the engine.

“We lose a lot, there’s a big deficit on the straights,” Alonso said, with the Spaniard’s session curtailed by a power unit issue that meant he also didn’t get his final run of Q1 in.

“The data is there for everyone, we are not blind. We see the same data as you guys, and we know that we need to work on on the power.

“But we are trying to support each other, and I think there are clear targets for next year.”

As for Stroll, he shot down the possibility of being able to stay with the cars ahead, which will only add to Aston Martin’s deficit as they fall back from the slipstream battles: “We’re three seconds off the pack, so we’re not going to stay with the pack.”

Winner: Ollie Bearman

With Haas having quite an anonymous season overall, it’s rare that either Esteban Ocon or Ollie Bearman have sessions noteworthy enough to feature on either a Winners or Losers list, but Bearman’s performance on Saturday was a notable improvement on what we’ve grown accustomed to seeing from an inconsistent – in more ways than one – Haas car.

With Haas having rolled out with aero upgrades on the VF-26, Bearman could feel the changes.

“The car has been night and day different, and I’m really really proud of the team for that,” he said.

“They brought a fantastic upgrade on the car this weekend. It’s been a long time coming, but it proves what we’re capable of, and I hope that one day we can fight on the level playing field with the other teams.

“Looking in the speed traces, we’re much closer now to Audi. Alpine is still a step ahead of us, but, in terms of that kind of high speed balance, things are looking much nicer.

“We have definitely a lot more load, and that correlates exactly with what we were asking for. The fact that we’re up here in qualifying in Monza on a new package means that hopefully we can fight for more again in Madrid.”

The British driver was able to make the most of the new parts, but it was an unwelcome case of deja vu for Esteban Ocon, who couldn’t hit the same highs.

Revealing he’s suffering from a performance inconsistency that has become all too consistent at Haas, particularly for his side of the garage, Ocon summed up that the upgrades have worked “on Ollie’s side”, and admitted he’s “thought about that” when asked if he’s considered calling in an exorcist to look over his car…

Loser: Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson

After the highs of Zandvoort, both of Red Bull’s super-subs had more difficult days at the office on Saturday.

In Tsunoda’s case, this is probably more indicative of his relative lack of experience with the unique nature of the energy management side of things, with Zandvoort being an energy-rich circuit and perhaps masking the true challenge of mastering the foibles of the deployment strategies.

A full second off Lindblad’s pace in Q1, Tsunoda was clearly bewildered when he spoke to the media afterwards, having felt that aspects such as the confidence through corners, and getting the slipstream nailed, had been executed well.

But losing seven-tenths in the first sector had him scratching his head as he pointed out that it’s “just two corners”, and that, “I don’t think I’ve done anything massively wrong enough to lose lap time a lot in a, basically, straight line”.

Most tellingly, Tsunoda revealed that the team, for whom he’s driven for years in the past, had treated him “like a new driver” in preparation for Monza, suggesting Racing Bulls was aware that the challenge of an energy-starved circuit would be very different for his 2026 experience level than what he’d had at Zandvoort.

As for Lawson, his quest to get through into Q3 to provide a tow for Max Verstappen came to an end in Q2, and the Kiwi wasn’t best pleased about it after he was blocked at Turn 1 by a wrong-footed Piastri.

His angry radio message to the team of being “left out to dry” was a heat of the moment blowing off of steam, he explained later, saying “We just had a plan, and in some ways didn’t really follow it exactly.

“I just felt at times I didn’t really know what I was doing.”

Fitted with a new power unit, as had been planned by Red Bull ahead of the weekend, means Lawson will be starting from 21st, a place behind Antonelli, with the two front-running cars likely to easily slice through the pack.

Loser: Max Verstappen

After the low of his uncharacteristic error at Zandvoort, the prospect of a more competitive Italian Grand Prix looked out of reach through practice, before the Dutch driver claimed the sixth fastest time in qualifying.

He’d felt the car was in a reasonable place going into the session, saying that it was a “comfortable car” even if pole position was out of reach after FP3.

But he explained he’d suddenly experienced a weird handling shift between FP3 and qualifying.

“Suddenly, I had the feeling that something failed on the rear axle again – not the wing! – but something else mechanically where we have to look into again.

“But it’s not the first time this happens, but it happens at random times on the weekend. Unfortunately, now it happened at the most important part.”

“When you have these kind of problems, it becomes super difficult to drive. The car is not complying anymore when it should do on bumps and curves, and that’s just costing lap time, unfortunately.”

Asked whether he believes the issues are down to manufacturing and the components themselves, or down to operational issues in the garage, Verstappen said it’s not down to the mechanics and said there are components the team is not “on top of”.

“I just want to have a car that is in 100 per cent state,” he said.

“That would be nice because we have too many weekends where things just go wrong, just stuff either breaks or we’re not operating at 100 per cent.

“I was very happy with FP3. I think the team did a great job in terms of finding a much better balance in the car finally. But then we couldn’t then translate that too.”

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Winners and losers from the 2026 Italian Grand Prix Qualifying