MADRID – Lando Norris picked up where he left off at Zandvoort to keep his championship hopes alive with pole position at the Madring.

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

Winners and losers from the 2026 Spanish Grand Prix qualifying

Winner: Lando Norris

With Monza not playing to McLaren’s strengths, Lando Norris picked up the baton from where he put it down with his Zandvoort win to surge to pole position, in a car that Andrea Stella was not showing the performance to be regarded as the weekend’s benchmark.

At a track with characteristics that move away from the outright need for low drag and high-speed efficiency, the MCL40 was alive in Norris’ hands as the British driver put everything on the line to take pole by just a hundredth of a second from Kimi Antonelli.

The reigning World Champion revealed he was shocked by the outcome, having felt he’d thrown away any chance of a good lap with his clumsy last corner, and, having famously removed his in-car sector times monitoring, was taken aback to be told by race engineer Will Joseph that his time was, indeed, enough to finish as fastest man.

With McLaren now broadly competitive, Norris’ mid-season performances are perhaps even more impressive that what he put in en route to his maiden title last year, with his confidence levels soaring upon realisation that he is the real deal; so good was his pole position lap, that Norris posited that it may even be his best ever qualifying effort, and lap, from his entire career.

It was a monumental improvement, as the British driver found more than seven-tenths of a second of improvement between his first and second run – this improvement being made even with the last corner mistake.

“I had a good idea of what I wanted to do, but it was whether my brain let me do it on the last lap, and everything pretty much worked perfectly,” he said.

“I wasn’t quite relaxed. And on the last lap, just took a good breath and everything kind of came together. So, it was pretty much perfect, bar the last corner. I thought I was in the wall and I thought the boys were going to have to repair the car tonight.

“So, it could have been a little bit better, but nonetheless, like I said, one of the best laps I’ve done, and just everything that I wanted to achieve, I achieved. And that’s one of the moments where you’re kind of in that flow state, and it puts a big smile on my face.”

Reaching that zen-like subconscious driving is something all the greats have been able to do, and, while defending his crown might be a step too far in the face of a relentless Antonelli, Norris is joining the Italian and Max Verstappen in being this year’s most dependable and impressive forces.

Loser: Ollie Bearman

Crashing heavily, to the point of not being able to take part in qualifying, is always likely to land a driver on the loser’s list for a day’s running, especially when the crash is purely down to driver error.

Bearman revealed afterwards that he was left frustrated by the fact that he knew the car is competitive around the Madring, and had a good feeling behind the wheel up to the point at which he got caught out by a gust of wind at Turn 10.

Ayao Komatsu opined that Bearman had been on the wrong side of the limit, “which he doesn’t do very often” and revealed that his driver is likely facing a pitlane start as the damage means he will need a change of chassis.

In better news for Bearman, in terms of a teammate comparison, Esteban Ocon ended up in 15th place – a good performance for the French driver on a weekend where neither car is suffering from the ghosts in the machine that usually affect one of the cars, but not so far ahead that Bearman can’t think about still being able to come out ahead of race day.

Winner: Kimi Antonelli

If not for Norris’ magic final lap, it would have been another day of triumph for Kimi Antonelli, with the Mercedes man coming out on top in the second runs to pip Lewis Hamilton’s initial provisional pole.

“I thought it was a good lap, but then this guy [Norris] just snatched it away, so good job to them,” he said.

“On my side, you know, very intense qualifying, difficult to get the balance right with the track being so hot. But yeah, the lap was pretty clean.

“Obviously, it’s not easy to put things together on a track like this, which is quite tricky. But overall, I think we did a good job, and now we’ll try to see what we can do tomorrow.”

Would Antonelli have taken pole position with a cleaner lap? Entirely possible, but execution is everything, and, having made a small error on his first run in Q3, the championship leader had just been a little more cautious than the reigning Champion.

“A little bit first chicane and then Turn 13 after the banking,” he said of where he felt he’d left time on the table.

“I had a big moment lap one in Q3 and, yeah, just didn’t really have the confidence to push the entry as much again.

“But overall, it was a clean lap, nothing to say. It’s a track that is not easy to put things together, and of course Lando did a great job, especially catching up after missing FP2 and, yeah, putting things together. So, yeah, obviously it’s a shame to miss out on pole for so close, but we’ll try to do a good race tomorrow.”

Every day that goes by, every session in which Antonelli hasn’t repeated any of the fumbles of last year, shows that the Mercedes driver continues to deliver, despite the pressure building while closing in on his maiden title.

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Loser: George Russell

After coming out second-best to Antonelli at Monza, regardless of the circumstances in which it happened, Saturday was another day in which the British driver was, again, bested by his young teammate.

A mistake early in Q1 saw Russell brush the wall, requiring a precautionary stop to check for damage, but recovered to be in the mix in Q3.

But high tyre temperatures on his final run meant he fell short by three-tenths of a second, having lost grip in the second half of the lap after the temperature spike through the banking.

Far from a disaster of a Saturday but, with Antonelli putting it on the front row, the car had more potential than Russell could unlock.

Winner: Max Verstappen

Third place, just a tenth and a half from pole position, was a very respectable performance from the four-time F1 World Champion, who emerged, unsurprisingly, comfortably clear of Liam Lawson’s effort in the other car.

There’s never really a sense that Verstappen ever fails to get the most out of his car, and the Dutch driver even briefly had assembled drivers in the media pen thinking aloud that he might just do enough to take pole position on his final run.

Red Bull hasn’t been consistently at the sharp end this year, but Verstappen appeared pleased, if not outright enthused, with his day’s work.

“I think it was alright,” he said.

“I mean, I haven’t been here so much this year in the top three, so for me I think we had a good qualifying.

“The car, I think we made some nice improvements, but it was also, I think, straight away when we arrived here in, let’s say, a decent window. And then, yeah, I think where we just struggle a little bit is always that final sector, where we just don’t seem to get our deployment like our competitors, and that makes it, of course, very tough to match.

“But, yeah, overall, I mean, I’m quite happy with how everything went. I mean, every qualifying, from Q1 to Q2 to Q3, just nice progression.

“There were not really things that, I guess, I left on the table, just more like a few limitations within the car that we know we have, plus the deployment in the final sector where we just didn’t seem to maybe fully get it right. But that’s qualifying. I mean, the race is again very different.”

While Verstappen might need some fortune to fall into his lap if he’s to get a win in 2026, there’s no doubt that the four-time F1 World Champion remains at the top of his game.

Loser: Oscar Piastri

On a day when his teammate was producing magic at the front, Piastri wound up an anonymous P7, and explained later that this result had largely been due to execution on his side, rather than any great mistake.

“That was really just one of those sessions where you wish you could hit the reset button and have another go, rather than than struggling with anything massively,” he said.

” It was just quite messy. You know, first lap of Q1, I had to abort, and you just get yourself a bit out of sequence and out of the rhythm a bit. And at a track like this, it’s very easy to lose a lot of time. So that was that.

“And I mean, also my last lap in Q3, I’m not surprised it’s that far off because it was pretty crap. So yeah, that’s how it goes sometimes.”

Piastri hasn’t shown much of the speed and form that made him a championship contender last season, and is now firmly being left in the shade by his ever more impressive teammate – just how can he turn things around?

Winner: Franco Colapinto

After ending the Monza weekend fighting the tears after a costly error during the race, the Argentine bounced back immediately to lead Alpine’s charge and make it into Q3 on a day where Pierre Gasly was mystified by his lack of pace.

Explaining that he felt he’d learned a lot from his Italian faux pas, Colapinto suggested that his Q2 lap was “one of the best I’ve done” and hailed his effort to make it into Q3 as “amazing”.

Colapinto has shown plenty of signs this year that he’s weathered the difficulties of his sophomore year in Formula 1, and is starting to emerge as a genuine midfield force alongside the known quantity that is Gasly.

Loser: Michael Clayton

Not a name that will ring many bells, but Fernando Alonso’s poor old press officer found himself singled out by the two-time F1 World Champion for his driving skills or, rather, his relatively lack of them compared to the Spaniard.

Alonso had been knocked out in Q1, which he admitted was disappointing at a track where he felt the AMR26 showed plenty of strength through the corners, and then decided to use his press officer, Michael Clayton, as the example of just how an average driver can be just as impressive as a properly fast one in the current generation.

“Michael can drive in [Turns] 10-12 because you go flat with no K deployment, and then, at one point, the K comes, and then you go fast on the exits.

“But, for F1 or motorsport in general, it should be that, if Michael has is braver than me, he goes faster.

“If I have more ‘attributes’,” he said, with a wry smile, “I will go faster than him. That’s how it should be qualified. And now it’s just how much SOC [state of charge] I have [that decides if] I will go faster or slower.”

With Alonso cheerily slapping his press officer on the shoulder after singling out Clayton, the two-time F1 World Champion wasn’t quite finished joking at his expense.

Asked for his thoughts on how conversations with FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem about attempts to help Honda under the new regulations will progress, Alonso said, “it’s my responsibility to help them with my experience to make whatever we can do to do this kind of things. [Turns] 10, 12, you know, whoever is faster there is…it cannot be Michael faster than Max Verstappen if he has more battery, because 10-12 is such an incredible corner that it has to be, you know, Max up and making the difference compared to Michael.”

With Clayton and Alonso leaving the pen in good spirits, the real mystery for Sunday is figuring out whether Clayton is quite as slow as Alonso suggests, or whether the Spaniard was simply playing mind games to unsettle his ‘teammate’…

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Winners and losers from the 2026 Spanish Grand Prix Qualifying