Winners and losers from 2026 Monaco Grand Prix F1 qualifying
The Monaco Grand Prix is the only place on the Formula 1 calendar where the championship leader ending up on pole feels like a bit of a surprise.
Here's our assessment of who can be proud of their efforts in that stunning qualifying session, and who just blew their weekend.
Loser: Ferrari (3rd & 4th)
It's the hope, etcetera. After Friday's practice 1-2s, this was Ferrari's weekend - until Kimi Antonelli and Max Verstappen entered the ring.
After Q1, Charles Leclerc looked a bit lost. He had a moment through Massenet in Q3 that put him out of sync, forcing him to end the session with two push laps - the last of which ended with him hitting the barriers while Antonelli took pole.
It could have been worse than fourth on the grid - but after Friday, he wouldn't have settled for this.
Neither would Lewis Hamilton, who was well off the pace in Q2 - and still making front wing angle changes during that session.
A baffling fall from Ferrari, which seemed at sea when it mattered most. - Samarth Kanal
Winner: Kimi Antonelli (1st)
Staring, slackjawed in awe, there are few superlatives worthy of Antonelli's pole lap.
He put that micron-perfect flying lap in right at the death of an exceptional qualifying battle in Monaco to beat Verstappen by just 0.043s.
Given Ferrari's pace in FP1 and FP2, Antonelli was on the back foot going into Saturday. Mercedes found huge gains overnight and in FP3.
He then had the measure of team-mate George Russell throughout qualifying and it all came down to that last qualifying run.
The Monaco GP is now Antonelli's to lose. - SK
Loser: George Russell (6th)
"Bamboozled" was the word Russell used to describe his confusing lack of pace compared not only to Red Bull and Ferrari, but also to team-mate Antonelli.
The pre-season title favourite then spoke about how this generation of cars just isn't conducive to his driving style.
He looked, and sounded, defeated after qualifying. On Sunday he could find himself staring at a gulf of more than 60 points to Antonelli. - SK
Winner: Max Verstappen (2nd)
Beaten to pole narrowly by championship leader Antonelli, this was still a vintage performance from Verstappen.
You can obviously never count him out around a place like Monaco, where the driver can make that last bit of difference if they're feeling confident in the car underneath them.
The 2026 Red Bull looks pretty handy through low-speed corners and that, combined with Verstappen's special talents, made for an absorbing pole position shootout with Mercedes' teenaged sensation.
As Anthony Davidson's excellent 'Sky Pad' analysis showed, Verstappen was mighty through Casino Square - absolutely inch perfect and supremely fast, as Antonelli left just a touch of extra margin through the crucial right-hander.
Antonelli was almost unmatched at later flicking the car left then right through the chicane after the tunnel - and crucially keeping to the right after jumping the right-side kerb, to try to straight-line the acceleration zone towards Tabac.
Verstappen was pretty near matching Antonelli through that bit too, and there was basically nothing in it except for a slightly tidier run through Rascasse for Antonelli.
It was a brilliant qualifying battle, one Verstappen clearly enjoyed despite ending up marginally on the wrong side of it. - Ben Anderson
Loser: Audi (13th & 16th)
Audi went into qualifying as a favourite to get its cars into Q3 along with the big four, so both Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto ending up deep in the midfield represents a missed opportunity.
Although both cars in theory made it to Q2, it had started to unravel in Q1 when Bortoleto clipped the inside wall at the Nouvelle Chicane entry.
Although he'd already set a lap good enough to advance, he took no further part and ended up 16th - kicking himself for the fact he "pushed a bit too much in Q1, where there was no need".
Hulkenberg described his Q3 lap as "clean", but struggled as "it plateaued out for us, the grip level, and I'm struggling to find laptime". - Edd Straw
Winner: Pierre Gasly (9th)
This wasn't quite a 'where the heck did that come from?' performance from Gasly, considering the lowest he'd been in any practice session (albeit in final practice) was 13th.
But this year's clear midfield benchmark car looked more like Q2 fodder here than it had done at any other point since the Australian GP season opener, so the fact Gasly ended up with best of the rest honours again points to a job maximised - especially in squeaking through to Q3 by 0.025s.
That probably owed a little to Audi underperforming, sure, but this by no means looks like Alpine's happiest hunting ground. So all the while it's struggling to get two cars at the same level - for whatever reason, be it car- or driver-related - it's vital it maximises those 'bad days'.
On that score, this represents a job well and truly done. - Jack Cozens
Loser: McLaren (7th & 8th)
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella talked up McLaren's low-speed corner performance after Canada, and so perhaps there was some expectation last year's Monaco winner (and world champion) Lando Norris might be a pole contender here, considering drivers from Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari were all in the fight at some stage.
Norris himself disagreed with Stella's assessment and the driver ultimately was proven right, as McLaren found itself cast adrift behind the top three teams and unable even to pick off the struggling Russell, with both drivers basically lacking overall aerodynamic load and thus grip rather than chasing any particular balance issue with the car.
Norris called Monaco a "reality check" for McLaren, saying the car was "just very difficult to drive, not very compliant, not forgiving in any way".
"My confidence level last year was 100, now it's 85 and around Monaco you need to be around 100." - BA
Winner: Liam Lawson (10th)
Given a Racing Bulls car had not climbed higher than 14th place in any of the three practice sessions, it seemed more likely the team would be at risk of elimination in Q1 than reaching the top 10.
But not only did both make it to Q2, but Lawson even reached Q3.
Although he was a clear last in the final segment of qualifying, 0.186s slower than Gasly's Alpine just ahead, he'd used his last fresh set of softs on the first run so was on used rubber for the best of the conditions. But ultimately, he'd already aced the session by making the top 10.
Given Lawson had a tricky FP3, with a couple of lairy moments that required collecting up when the rear end of the car gave up on him, it was a big surprise to see him and Racing Bulls in Q3 and required outstanding execution. - ES
Loser: Haas (17th & 19th)
Both Haas drivers lamented their luck after their Q1 exits. "I feel like I say that every time. The luck is not with us this year so far," said 17th-place qualifier Esteban Ocon.
It's true both he and Ollie Bearman were unfortunate; the Bortoleto-induced red flag caused both to abandon laps that would at the very least have been improvements and most likely would've been enough to guarantee passage to Q2.
Ocon even pondered whether Q3 might've been possible, Haas having rectified a "weird delivery on downforce" with parts changes for Saturday that meant "suddenly the car woke up in FP3".
But as he conceded too, the red flag did expose a weakness: "The problem we have is that we can't warm up the tyres on just an out [lap] and a push. We need a prep lap, otherwise we have no grip."
Bearman agreed, claiming his final push lap was five tenths down on his abandoned effort by the time he was in the tunnel and saying he'd been "pushing 110%, giving it everything" in search of an "everything" lap.
So maybe one car was doomed by the red flag. And maybe it's just a Monaco anomaly.
But it should be food for thought - because ultimately one car (Carlos Sainz's Williams, which jumped from a likely Q1 exit to an eventual cusp-of-the-top-10 start in that post-red-flag dash) being able to switch its tyres on and another (the Haas) not being able to is probably the difference now between a shot at points and a point-less Sunday afternoon. - JC
